


Untouchable

by googol88



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Crime Fighting, Gangsters, Gen, Military Background, Organized Crime, Parahumans, Special Operations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-08-29 12:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8488819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/googol88/pseuds/googol88
Summary: When reading Wildbow's Worm, I was struck by the portrayal of Parahumans in organized crime groups (e.g. Gesellschaft). I decided to explore what would happen if the US Government formed groups to deal with the organized crime like they did in the 1920s-1930s.The ATF and FBI jointly found the Organized Parahuman Crime Unit, which runs the OSF: an urban warfare special ops-style strike force that employs US Marines to capture Parahumans who are significantly involved in cartels, gangs, or crime syndicates.As of the writing of this synopsis, this story is Alternate Universe, distinguished only by the existence of this government organization. Otherwise it is so far identical to Worm, though I have no plans to have Worm characters feature in the story.I had this idea and was kicking it around for a while before deciding to write it, and NaNoWriMo just started, so I figured I'd do that. I'm attempting to write {1 chapter, >2000 words} daily until I hit {December, 50 000 words, the end of the story} but I'll have less time every day, so the quality may noticeably drop towards the end (not yet an issue) until I can return and edit the stuff. I will likely not post daily even if I write daily.





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Worm](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/240001) by Wildbow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am composing this story first on my computer in a text editor, then editing it in a word processor. I post on AO3 and then include it here. I am trying to put it a few places so people can read and follow it on their preferred site. I have spent reasonable time reading the rules on AO3, SB, and SV, and believe this to be in violation of none of them. That does mean, however, that I spend a lot of time re-formatting between the various places I have the story. My primary goal at the moment is to produce words, so if the formatting is weird or the updates are late here, please be patient. For example, horizontal rules are not supported off of AO3.

Neither _Worm_ nor history are mine. Discrepancies between this and those are either my fault or part of the AU.

 

A great many thanks to my friend [ MajorBummer ](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7687251/WhatABummer) for his editing, brainstorming, and exhaustive knowledge of weapon specifications and ammunition types. If this fic reads anything like Tom Clancy-lite, then I’m immensely proud and it’s thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge. I find that _Worm_ and Clancy both tend to feature lots of internal monologue and thought process, and I’ve attempted to adopt that style here to some extent.

 

I am not yet committing either way, but as of right now, this story will feature none of the characters or settings we know and love from _Worm_ ; it just lives in an alternate version of the same world. For that reason, you can safely read it without it _really_ spoiling any of _Worm_.

 

Other Discussions

 

[AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8488819/)

[SB](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/untouchable-worm-au.453684/)

[SV](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/untouchable-worm-au.33461/)

[reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/WormFanfic/comments/5bpnyf/untouchable_au_my_fic_unpowered_marinesspecial/)


	2. Prologue

Director Johnson leaned over the mic. "Senators," he concluded, "it is my considered opinion that the long-term negative effects incurred by a lack of threat response are much worse than casualties faced at the hands of Behemoth."

Senator Pierce looked up at Johnson, over the rim of his glasses; down at Johnson, over the edge of the chamber seating; down at Johnson, the condescension in his voice dripping onto the floor below. "How do you rectify that with the nearly existential threat faced every time Behemoth appears?"

Johnson replied quickly. "And the difference made - by any single Parahuman, in a conflict against an existential threat? - insignificant."

Senator Pierce countered. "On the contrary, it is the contributions of the individual Parahumans that  _ make  _ a difference. Not to mention the unpredictable and...exponential...ways in which their powers can combine and synergize."

"And this synergy typically happens between heroes and the villains that fight them, in the heat of battle, when communication is hectic at best?” Johnson scoffed, “The FBI longitudinal cross-study of declassified PRT records from the last year of Behemoth battles shows  _ little  _ villain-hero collaboration in fights, especially in - as you put it - 'synergistic' - ways."

"It is soldiers that win wars, director - not armies."

Johnson snorted to himself. That was one hell of a ballsy thing to say, what with one of the Joint Chiefs in the committee chambers right now.

The senator finished "-and it is my view that removing any soldiers from a conflict that has the potential to sweep a city off the face of the planet is an unacceptable price."

"Will the senator yield the remainder of his time?"

Senator Pierce affirmed that he was finished, and a senator from New York began speaking into her microphone. "In this war with celestial monsters, so much worse than any of the terrible monsters like Godzilla that captured our imagination..." The speaker paused, and Director Johnson again snorted to himself. Massive monster films hadn't quite seemed as entertaining after Behemoth showed up the second or third time. Certainly there was a huge spike in sales of  _ Godzilla _ ,  _ Mothra _ , and the like, in the immediate wake of Behemoth's emergence in Iran. But within a few appearances - certainly by the time New York got hit - the interest waned. It's not much fun to make-believe about a nightmare that could wipe out everything you knew of a city in hours. Especially when that nightmare was a recurring one: a wailing siren that rose in cities across the world multiple times a year since that first time in Iran...

Johnson was snapped back to what the senator from New York (Sen. Weinfeld, he noted, reading the embossed plaque in front of her) was saying, but was surprised to find it departing in a different direction than he had initially thought it was going.

"While it is true that this price is indeed high, I think Senator Pierce will recognize that the price of  _ every _ city slowly rotting is higher yet. The price of losing a few more lives, of risking the loss of an entire city, is high indeed. But we are left with no economical option. Since the appearance of Scion 1982, much of our agency has been taken away from us. While many have turned their powers to good, it is a fact I think the entire committee can easily recognize-" She paused, eyeing key members of the Senate committee in turn. "-that most have not. Most have used their powers to bend or break the law, or to live outside its confines altogether. The erosion of  _ our _ power to make choices leaves us with these few expensive options."

Weinfeld continued, "Organized crime was a thing of the past at one point in time, yet we find ourselves in a worse situation now than before. Since Hobbs, we've gradually eliminated public corruption in the United States. Organized crime, however, is at its highest levels since prohibition. If we do not act, we will see the gradual erosion of public power and the rule of law,  _ as we have been seeing _ ."

She paused for breath, "This decision is not just about the long-term tradeoff of fewer drugs and weapons on the streets. This decision is also about the future of the rule of law in the United States of America. Without the rule of law, there is no state. So yes, it is an expensive decision. But the alternative is unspeakably costly. What does it matter if Behemoth arrives in Los Angeles and does slightly less damage, if all following relief efforts fail because the city is under feudal control? The resurgence of the Mafia in my own state..." She snorted.

Director Johnson looked at Senator Pierce. He did not look as certain as he had at the beginning of this. There were two wars to be fought, and they were both wars of attrition. One was against a monster, the other against the massed forces of human villains - a fight against human nature, a far more insidious threat than a monster. But it was hard to convince somebody who held conviction that Behemoth posed the greater threat. Behemoth presented an out-of-context problem for humans. How do you fight a literal monster, a being not of this planet? His skin appeared to be made of rock - obsidian, or something like it - but only a naive interpretation of his appearance suggested this. Bullets did not chip his skin. Tank shells did not pierce his armor. Air-to-air missiles launched from fighters and tactical weaponry dropped from bombers did little more than enrage him.

Because of this, it was easy to imagine he was the greatest threat to humanity. Johnson might even agree, but that did not mean he was the only threat, or that sacrificing a slight advantage against him - the willing cooperation of some of the world's villains - was not worth addressing other threats.

Parahuman villains. There was little doubt in Johnson's mind that whatever gave Parahumans their powers gave Behemoth his, too. For thousands of years, the laws of physics were just that. Then the laws became violable, mutable: suggestions. No way the appearance of a literal monster within the same lifetime of people who could manipulate energy with a whim  _ wasn't _ related.

So the war against Parahuman villains and the war against Behemoth were both wars of attrition - and wars humanity was losing. But Behemoth...nobody had any solutions. For this exact reason - the lack of experience or perspective with which to view this Behemoth - the creature seemed like the bigger problem to policy makers, the general populace, and those on the side of the law. Johnson saw this, the monumental problem that lay ahead of humanity (or rather, below them, tunnelling through the crust and upper mantle to emerge every few months). He just also saw the long game, and thought maybe the Senators were finally beginning to see it too.

Parahuman villain-backed organized crime. In the late twenties and early thirties it had been members of his agency - then called the Bureau of Prohibition (of which the ATF was a direct descendant) - who had mounted offensives against the likes of the unstoppable Al Capone. His agency was now focused on the border from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast, trying to stop (or even slow) the flow of weapons and drugs over the border from the south. Cartel warlords had the same air of invincibility that Capone had in the mid-to-late twenties. And their aura was spreading. Spreading north of the border, and helped by the drug dealer's recruitment of Parahumans.

It used to be that if you caught somebody dealing on the side of the road, and got them to turn their supplier (that part was easy enough), and somehow traced the supply chain back a few links (where it got harder), you'd eventually get to somebody who was too afraid of dying to talk. And that person was usually only a few spots on the badguy orgchart from the actual drug runners coming over the border.

It was a cell-based design. Each person only knew the names of maybe their supplier, a few peers, and whoever they sold to. Optimized for a war where the adversary was the government - and all it could do was throw you in jail for a couple decades if they caught you with your pants down. The chief security was obscurity: it kept you from getting caught, tagged, and locked up.

But now? Once the top guy recruited a few parahuman enforcers, and the proliferation of powered people spread through the ranks? Power began to be the real security. Now, the police wouldn't come after anyone too high up on the orgchart, because they couldn't afford to get into that kind of conflict. Or because they couldn't afford to kill a Parahuman, because you  _ might  _ help with Behemoth's next appearance. And even if they did tag you, some friends could break you out en-route to prison.

Now it was an actual organization. None of the dark network, subterfuge-based cell design. Everyone knew who their boss was and could afford to say it aloud because their boss had  _ power _ , and could protect them. The more Parahumans the gangs got, the more power they got, the more public they could be. And the more public they were, the more parahumans they recruited. If nobody had noticed the snowball gathering size and speed at first, they were noticing now.

The United States had started to take a firm stance on organized crime with those heroes in the late twenties. The stance would firm up over the next few decades. Ultimately, though, Parahuman criminals represented the same out-of-context problem Behemoth did. Most good guys thought they understood the bad guys - just normal criminals and villains, but a little bit stronger - but ATF Director Johnson  _ knew  _ they did not. Organized crime had found some sort of loophole - some sort of blind spot - in the public and private awareness by attaching itself to Parahumans. The US government had made it clear that organized crime was not permitted in the country, but then they had gone and let it spring up under the guiding hands of Parahumans. Criminal gangs operating across the country, and some with deeper connection to outside groups. Gesellschaft had connections in New England,  _ La Cosa Nostra _ had seen a resurgence in New York since their steady erosion in the wake of RICO in the seventies, and of course - the growing problem of cartel connections in Mexico.

New gangs were forming constantly. If you were a villain and wanted to start a gang, all you had to do was find a few jerkoffs who shared the same ideals as you and had powers and you were seriously in contention for most powerful group of any midsize-to-large city.

A mention of his name snapped Johnson out of his train of thought, but he had missed whatever it was that was said. Senator Pierce was speaking: "-and the focus is on Parahuman-backed organized crime." Pierce looked at him for a reply.

"Correct, senator. Again, the apprehending and interrogation of Parahumans in most cases is still left to the PRT. The purpose of the proposition here is just to focus on removing Parahumans from the power structure of existing organized crime groups so that my agency and the FBI can make traditional raids and arrests."

Pierce, seeking confirmation, asked: "It is, as the proposal says-"

"A surgical strike force."

* * *

 

Senator Pierce was the main opposition to the passing of the Act. Johnson could hear from the direction of his questions that he had largely been persuaded; you don't advance quickly through the ranks of field agents without having some capability to read people. 

Johnson smiled, remembering his time spent in interrogation rooms with perps. He would never admit it to anybody who he spent time talking to these days - all of them were ranked way too high to let something like this slip - but he had honestly enjoyed himself the most as a Field Agent. There was something that really appealed to him about the dynamic in an interrogation room - the psychological battlefield he could almost see superimposed on the cold steel desks they sat at during interrogations. The suspect always had a simple objective: walk out of the room without saying anything incriminating, without giving anything up. The rules about what he could do (not much) and could not do (pretty much everything) during an interrogation made it hard, and most people saw them as fetters on the capabilities of law enforcement. But not him. To him, they were a challenge.

It was this attitude, and his ability to overcome those challenges like no other, that led to his promotion. His promotion brought with it new objectives and new challenges as he was promoted to Special Agent, and eventually to Director. At every level of the organization the objective shifted a little on the spectrum - from bringing down a single suspect to mounting a cohesive offensive against an entire organization. His goals became wider, his methods more macro-oriented. But every so often, he still got to employ his charisma and ability to read people - like at this Senatorial Committee hearing.

His expertise was telling him that the committee was all but ready to pass the Act into law. And he was ready to start taking down Parahumans, to change his goals and strategies once again. He was ready for the new challenges, and he suspected this would be the greatest yet.


	3. Improvisation 1.1

_ It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.  _ \- Sun Tzu,  _ The Art of War _

"It's 'cause we're normal!"

"What?"

"It's because we're  _ normal _ !" Wilson shouted louder, an evil grin on his face.

Guzman eyed him across the back of the armored vehicle they rode in.

"Doesn't matter if we die! They don't need  _ us _ in the next Behemoth fight!" Wilson continued.

"What the fuck you think we would even do against that thing?" Michael Williams muttered.

Guzman turned to him. For a guy who was easily the tallest in any room he was in, he always seemed reserved and quiet. "I'd fuck him up!" Guzman retorted.

Michael snorted. Guzman knew why: four times now, Behemoth had appeared, and nobody was any closer to figuring out how to damage the damn thing. "Why haven't we tried nuking it yet?" Guzman asked, but he knew the answer.

"Too much collateral!" Wilson tended to shout all the time, but it was a characteristic Guzman appreciated here: the heavy-tread tires of the armored truck didn't exactly make for a smooth ride, even on an even road - but on the cracks and holes caused by SoCal's brutal sun and occasional brutal downpour, the truck rattled all the more. The belching of the diesel engine didn't exactly contribute to efforts at conversation, but Guzman knew it was a necessity. If shit were to go down, the truck might need to get them out, pronto. The armoring on the vehicle was heavy, and accelerating that much metal quickly was no trivial proposition.

Michael replied softly: "And there's not much collateral this way, then?" Guzman could barely hear the words, but knew that Wilson would hear them too, even though he was seated a few feet further away, across the aisle. That was the thing about Williams - he was quiet, but his voice was pitched to carry. Nobody on the team could be lacking in self-confidence, not after whatever they had each done to earn a spot on the strike force. Every operator on the team had a military background, though much of the support staff were civilians who had shown promise in their various areas of expertise.

"ETA 3 minutes" a voice said in their ears.

Guzman replied. "Acknowledged, strike actual. How's it looking?"

"Sear confirmed on-site. I have visual confirmation on Ironclad, headed to the meet. Currently two miles away." The cool voice in their ears was that of the OPCU Strike Force lead, Jon Davis. Davis was an ex-Marine who had left the USMC to work in the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI. Davis was uniquely qualified to head the OPCU Strike Force because of his time spent both as a soldier and as an agent. While Davis was not nominally in charge of the OPCU, he felt like the commander to his men. Once the OPCU Director had approved a target, the decisions of when, where, and how to engage were all made by Jon Davis.

Guzman could hear the sound of a similar heavily-armored van on the road behind them as it accelerated into a turn, its path diverging from that of the truck Guzman was riding in. The OPCU Strike Force was divided into different teams. Guzman was on Team Alpha, the designation a nod to the leader of a pack of wolves or dogs. Alpha excelled at raw strength, and their specialty was to hit hard and absorb damage. When considering how to best capture Parahumans nonlethally - they  _ were _ citizens of the United States, after all - Jon Davis had one key insight: why fight fair? Use surprise and employ the highest degree of adaptability. To this end, the newly-minted OPCU Strike Force had been divided up into three individual teams, designated OSF Alpha, OSF Delta, and OSF Omega.

Guzman considered the upcoming mission - the first real capture operation the OSF was going to perform. While the team certainly got some leeway - this  _ was _ their maiden voyage, and that provided a little grace - Guzman knew that lots of eyes higher-up were watching the outcome of this operation keenly. Sear and Ironclad were used to fighting together, and their powers synergized in highly useful ways. For this reason, the OSF was going to divide and conquer. The departing van contained OSF Delta, who would keep Ironclad pinned while OSF Alpha and Omega captured Sear.

Davis had decided that Sear's powers prevented the bigger problem to capture, even though he was the less dangerous of the two: he could heat metal by touching it with his skin, so handcuffs, knives, and even the armored van they rode in would all be somewhat meaningless against him. For that reason, they would blow their element of surprise on capturing Sear first. They had to assume he would be able to contact Ironclad, sending him some kind of distress signal the partners had pre-arranged. There were two possible avenues for Ironclad at this point: either he tried to help Sear or he did not. The second scenario would prove far more difficult for the OSF to deal with: they needed a force multiplier to hope to take down both Parahumans in quick succession. If they were to succeed, Guzman suspected it would be on the strength of the tenets Davis had developed - surprise and flexibility. The element of surprise was the existence of OSF Delta - Ironclad would rush to Sear's aid, expecting to meet with Parahuman heroes or rival gangbangers upon his arrival, and OSF Delta would surprise and pin him long enough for Alpha and Omega to neutralize Sear.

The other avenue, of course, was that Ironclad decided Sear wasn't worth the trouble, in which case the OSF's job was easy. Guzman felt pretty cynical about the likelihood of that occurring. In the doubtful scenario it did, the OSF would just mobilize Alpha and Bravo against Ironclad once Sear had been neutralized.

Around him, the sounds of his squadmates checking their gear brought Guzman out of his thoughts. Guzman was the captain of OSF Alpha, so he took a breath before issuing directions.

"Alright," he said. "Once we stop -"  _ and this damn loud engine shuts up _ , he thought " - I want two minutes of your  _ undivided _ attention before we offload."

"Roger that, captain." James Wilson said with a grin. James was the adrenaline junkie of the group; Guzman thought distractedly that there always was one in a team like this....

The men unstrapped and restrapped the velcro fasteners on their kevlar vests, tightening them in preparation for the impending operation. Pulled out of a platoon of Marines that had been deployed in the Middle East, Guzman felt uncomfortable on an instinctual level with the gear he was carrying. The vests had far less bulky ceramic plates, and his MP5 was positively  _ light _ compared to the M60 he was used to using, weighing about a quarter as much. Machine guns and heavy ceramic-plate vests just weren't quite something the US government felt like deploying with a civilian agency in close-quarters urban scenarios (even if most of the actual shooters on the OSF itself were all ex-military). Still, there was something comforting about the weight of an M60 and a good vest that left Guzman feeling vaguely naked. He compensated by cinching the vest down a little too tight, and winced, easing up on the straps a bit.

The van slowed to a halt and the engine cut. They were just around the corner from the cul-de-sac that held Sear's house, as close as they dared get with the loud diesel van. Guzman whistled softly and met the eyes of his two teammates in turn as they looked up at him.

"Williams. Sear. Go."

Williams took a breath began. "Hector Ramirez. Twenty-three. Sear. Can heat metals that touch his skin. Heating process is just what it says on the tin; metals cool at normal rate if not actively being heated by him. No known quantity limit or resource expenditure other than time involved in heating. Only confirmed to melt metals, but can possibly heat further. Heating is rapid, melting metals in a matter of seconds."

Guzman nodded. "Wilson. Defenses."

James took a giant grin and said "Well, he sure ain't bulletproof." When Guzman raised an eyebrow, he got more serious and continued the briefing. "He can of course melt bullets once he's shot. Sear has demonstrated no negative side effects from touching molten metal: no burns or damaged skin." Guzman nodded, affirming what everyone already knew. "OPCU intel suggests this...imperviousness? extends to his entire body, as the thermal energy is certainly transferred through his skin to his internal systems. With the amount of reports OPCU has collected that include him melting metal, he should have suffered real problems by now if his whole body wasn't set up to deal with that kind of massive localized heat."

Williams teased his squadmate in his characteristic mutter: "Oh, so you're a  _ smart _ son-of-a-bitch."

James grinned and continued. "You know I'm just an ass because I love you, Michael. Anyway. Sear. He can  _ maybe _ remove bullets from his body by melting and pouring out the metal. But he's still looking at a number of internal wounds - "

"Which will cauterize from the heat of the metal," Guzman interjected.

James shook his head. "Maybe, boss. If his whole system is impervious to hot metal, then there's nothing to suggest his wounds will cauterize when hot metal is applied. It would seem like they wouldn't, but we're way into the hypotheticals here. We're not even sure if he can remove bullets."

"And we're not shooting, if possible" Guzman reminded the team. Guzman spoke into his microphone. "Isn't that right, West?"

A voice spoke back to the team. "Maybe for you guys." They could hear the smile through Alan West's voice.

"West. Strategy. Go."

Alan West, the fourth and final member of OSF Alpha, spoke over their comms. "You three go in and flush him out."

"Or bag him," Guzman said archly.

Alan snorted loud enough for the comms to pick it up. "Let's be real boss. He's been dealing for five years now. He's gonna rabbit. And when he does, I... _ encourage _ him towards the nice little rabbit snare Omega's set up."

Alan was situated on top of a three-story warehouse at the end of the street onto which Sear's cul-de-sac opened. Guzman envied him a little:  _ he _ got a nice gun.

Guzman wrapped up the briefing. "Alright, guys. We know Sear's preferred fighting method is to act as artillery - offense to Ironclad's defense. Without Ironclad here, we don't really know what fighting style he's going to opt for. So remember to stay on your toes, stay ready, expect anything. Everyone ready?"

Hearing three voices chorus  _ aye _ \- one electronically through their earpieces - Guzman nodded, projecting confidence. "Right. Let's go."


	4. Improvisation 1.2

_ It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. _ \- Sun Tzu,  _ The Art of War _

The three men of OSF Alpha (sans West) disembarked from the van, Wilson and Williams extending their MP5 side-folding stocks as their feet touched the ground. The two moved together down the street to the alleyway, flanking around the approach to Sear's house so they wouldn't be seen entering the cul-de-sac. Guzman wanted to give them time to get into position at the back door to Sear's house before he approached the front. If Sear happened to be peering out the window and noticed him entering the cul-de-sac, his first instinct would be to check the backyard as a possible egress route for himself - or ingress route for more agents.

One advantage of four-man teams was that they could split into pairs as they were now doing. West had reasonable overwatch, and Guzman wasn't particularly worried about Sear as a threat to his own safety. Sear required metal to work with his power effectively, a resource they were denying him by separating him from Ironclad. Without the large quantities of metal supplied by his partner, Sear could do little more than threaten Guzman with whatever traditional weaponry he had on hand - and Guzman had a team backing him while Sear was all alone.

Separating the two Parahumans was the key to success here. OSF had lucked out in that aspect. Once they had turned a contact of Ironclad's, it was trivial to get a referral. An OPCU agent had contacted Ironclad, stating his interest in buying some drugs, and the referral had come through. Normally Ironclad wouldn't be so foolish as meet a new contact alone, but the OPCU agent who asked for the meet had asked for a trivial amount of drugs - enough only for personal use, really. Guzman smiled thinking about it - the analysts in the OPCU were pretty smart. Ask for too much product and you raised suspicions, especially at a first time meet. Ask for too little and you ran the risk of Ironclad deciding you were a small fish, not worth his time - or worse, have him send some unpowered underling. Express interest in purchasing a small amount  _ regularly _ , however, and you got the best of both worlds. The OPCU agent had merely specified that if the product was good enough, he'd buy the same amount, same time, every week.

The key was just that they had to get Sear and Ironclad separately. In the worst-case scenario, one where Ironclad brought Sear with him, the agent would just go through with the purchase as planned and repeat next week. Eventually the duo would realize that meeting a single customer for a small drug sale wasn't worth  _ both _ their time.

But the OSF had lucked out. The agent they had sitting at the end of Sear's block confirmed that Ironclad was seen driving alone. Once they got that information, Davis had greenlit the operation, for which Guzman was grateful. Sitting around in a metal van in the Los Angeles heat in body armor wasn't exactly fun, and he had no desire to repeat the experience next week. And also getting a dangerous Parahuman duo off the street was important. That too.

Michael's voice came on over the comms: "We're in position in the alley. Waiting for go order to approach back door."

Guzman was silent; even though Jon Davis tended to speak to teams individually, Guzman knew that Davis listened to all of their comms at all times. Davis was quarterbacking the entire mission from a state-of-the-art command center the OPCU had built in their field office, but there was a helicopter fueled and with pilot waiting on the roof of the building. Should things go south, Davis could enter the chopper and be airborne in seconds. Overhead in minutes.

At least, that was the plan for normal operations. Given the nature of Ironclad's power - reasonably long-range metallo-kinesis - they dared not give him a helicopter to work with. Davis' voice came on comms, confirming Omega was ready with their non lethal containment at the end of the street. Ironclad had just arrived at the meet and was approaching the OPCU agent. The timing would never be more ripe than this.

"Williams. Wilson. Go!" Guzman ordered. He waited a few tense moments, knowing it could all go wrong now if Sear happened to investigate his own backyard. As a drug dealer, though, Sear had thrown them a bone here: he tended to keep his blinds shut most of the time, since he didn't really want the neighbors seeing what he did in the house. While it wasn't a cookhouse, and the house was  _ registered under Sear's legal name _ (Guzman  _ wished _ he was kidding), Ironclad and Sear still tended to stash most of their stuff here as it came over the border before they could distribute it.

"Moving to the back door." Guzman heard Michael whisper. For once, Williams' quiet voice was well-suited to the moment. Guzman started to move towards the cul-de-sac. And that's when everything went to shit.

Davis' voice came on over the comm line. "Ironclad got suspicious and rabbited. He's on his way back to you. Have you been detected?"

Williams saw movement as a gap in the blinds flicked shut. The sound of a loud crash came from inside. "He's running!" Williams said into his comms.

"Breach!" Guzman ordered, and James took a second to line up his sights before shooting the wood around the deadbolt on the back door. Williams passed him, slamming into the door and flying through. Williams sprinted into the back hallway. Straight ahead, he could see the kitchen and dining room. To his right and left were bedrooms; Sear had been looking out the window in the bedroom to his left. Williams kept his feet moving forwards while shifting his weight backwards, planting his right foot - rotated inward - in the space in front of the doorway. With an explosive movement, he pushed off of his right foot, using the movement to shift his rapid forward momentum into leftward motion through the open door to the bedroom. As he began moving through the door, he automatically swept his MP5 to the left so he could cover the room. As the vista of the room panned across the top of his holographic sight, he realized the room was empty. "Clear!" He shouted.

James was not far behind Williams. As soon as Wilson broke down the back door, he accelerated into the hallway behind Michael. As Michael rotated left through the doorway to Sear's bedroom, James Wilson saw Sear run across his vision at the end of the hallway. "Hector Ramirez," he bellowed. "Freeze!"

Sear, of course, did not listen. James sprinted past Williams and into the dining room as Sear lept out the front door. "Guzman! He's headed to you!" James shouted as he followed Sear out the front door. Sear took off running towards the street onto which the cul-de-sac opened. On that street to the left was the OSF Alpha van they had arrived in. Guzman would be behind that van, attempting to drive Sear to the right, towards Omega.

Guzman snarled. Before Ironclad warned Sear, they had a more orderly plan in mind - but at this point, it was just trying to herd the stampeding animal towards the pack of lions that would take him down...non lethally...whatever. The metaphor didn't matter.

Guzman ran along the side of the OSF van, ducking down to lower his profile as he got to the hood of the vehicle. When he was bent over next to the front left tire of the van, he peeked out from behind the hood, keeping his body pressed against the warm metal. Sear was running out his front door and had almost reached the street that fronted his cul-de-sac; in moments he would be on Guzman.

Guzman briefly considered trying to take down Sear himself. He was armed with a ceramic knife specifically to deal with Sear and Ironclad; the knife would offer neither villain a substrate upon which their power could operate. Guzman dismissed the idea almost immediately - the Omega team specialized in nonlethal capture and had much more training than he did. Granted, every OSF member had to be well-versed in the techniques employed by any team. Regardless of assigned team, the OPCU - and Jon Davis - wanted each member of the OSF able to fill any role on any of the teams. But more than that, there was a significant benefit to each team knowing how the other teams would operate; this allowed members to instinctively know what their teammates were doing and have a sense for how they could best assist fellow OSF members in accomplishing their common goal.

"He's coming towards me now," Guzman said as these thoughts flashed through his mind. Even if Guzman had the tactical knowledge for a nonlethal takedown, Omega had the gear and the preparation. "I'm going to try to scare him towards Omega's position."

Guzman waited until Sear was almost at the street he sat on before standing up, allowing himself to be seen by Sear. Sear noticed him and instantly pivoted, preparing to sprint down the street in the opposite direction as Guzman. Perfect. There was a whole team waiting down that way to take down Sear.

"He's on his way to Omega!" Guzman said into the radio. Either Davis was allowing Omega to hear his comms or Davis would repeat the information to Omega himself; it didn't matter.

Sear was in the middle of the asphalt, but the width of the cul-de-sac as it opened onto the street was not significant. As Sear turned away from Guzman, he noticed the pistol tucked into the back of the man's waistband. In twenty steps, Sear had crossed from the middle of the street to the sidewalk. He dove behind a car which was parked on the same side of the street as the OSF van and Sear's cul-de-sac, ducking down in front of the stationary car so Guzman couldn't see him.

Guzman spoke on his radio to his team. "He's taken cover behind the red sedan up ahead! Sear is armed." As if to punctuate Guzman's statement, Sear stood up and fired off three shots towards Guzman; one actually hit the grille of the OSF van, pinging as it ricocheted off to destinations unknown.

_ Shit _ , Guzman thought. "Take cover," He yelled at his squadmates. The volume was unnecessary with their earpieces, but it was hard to talk calmly with the adrenaline of a firefight coursing through his veins.

James Wilson and Michael Williams did not need to be asked twice. They crouched behind the trunk of a car parked in the cul-de-sac near the entrance, a few cards separating them and Sear.

Guzman assessed the situation. As it was, Sear was not moving. That was fine; Guzman just didn't want him to start firing or hurling molten metal at them. As long as he was pinned by their fire, they could possibly get Omega to come flank Sear from the other side in a worst-case scenario. That would be cutting it close; though - Ironclad was on his way back. At least Delta would be able to delay him and buy Alpha and Omega some time to neutralize Sear. The key was that Alpha needed Sear to stay pinned. They were safest if Sear couldn't safely peek out from cover to fire back at them, let alone use his power.

Sear had almost total cover from Wilson and Williams, and if he chose to sneak up the street-facing side of the parked cars, he would be a hard target to hit. Guzman was confident he could make the shot; the MP5K-PDW had an effective firing range of 100 meters, and Guzman knew he was one of the better shots in the world with the weapon; he had to be given how much time OSF members were expected to spend on the range,  _ daily _ . But that was ignoring the critical issue - Guzman didn't  _ want _ to shoot at Sear; Guzman wanted Sear to stay crouched between cars like a good little boy until the nonlethal capture experts could show up. And the best way to accomplish that was to convince Sear that he had no chance of making it out alive if he moved from his position. To do that, he'd need to demonstrate to Sear that he was well and truly pinned in his current position.

Guzman looked around, casting for cover positions he could move to, with the goal of increasing the threat placed upon Sear's position. There! Across the street him and Sear were both on, there was another line of parked cars. The neighborhood consisted mostly of older houses - and it was Los Angeles where space was at a premium - so most houses in the neighborhood didn't have driveways, meaning the cars were all on the street. If Guzman crossed the street, he could quite easily and safely move up the outside of the cars, ducking from car to car and decreasing his distance to Sear. Then Williams and Wilson would be able to keep Sear pinned in on the cul-de-sac side of the street while Guzman kept him pinned on the opposite side.

"Wilson! Williams. I'm crossing the street; cover me." Guzman notified his squadmates. Guzman waited a moment before exploding into a sprint, crossing the street rapidly and getting his body behind the hood of a car. As he began to move, he heard the sound of James and Michael firing their suppressed weapons. When Guzman was safely in cover, they stopped firing.

The voice of Davis came on comms. "Alpha. Ironclad is inbound. You have a very short time to neutralize Sear before Ironclad is on-site."

"What about Delta?" Guzman asked.

"Delta is incapacitated," Guzman heard Davis' cool voice reply.

" _ Shit _ ," Guzman heard James curse over the comms.


	5. Improvisation 1.3

_ It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. _ \- Sun Tzu,  _ The Art of War _

Sear took the moment of reprieve while Alpha was distracted on comms to stand up and fire two shots at Guzman's new location, but both hit the car Guzman was using as cover.

_ Five _ , Guzman thought, mentally tracking the number of bullets Sear fired. There would be more in his magazine -

Guzman heard the sound of a magazine ejecting and the rasp as Sear slotted another one in. Sear stood up and stepped out from his cover in front of the sedan, turning to face Guzman. Sear pulled the trigger, shattering the rear window of the car. He pulled the trigger again, shattering the back-left window: the side window closest to him.  _ Shit. He's gonna take out the windows. _ Guzman scooted from where he was crouched near the hood of the car along its right side towards the back, putting the trunk and both rear doors between him and Sear, just as Sear shot out the driver's window. Guzman dropped onto his hands as if doing a pushup, dropping his face below the trunk of the car. He saw Sear's feet facing him, moving inexorably forward.

_ This is ridiculous _ , Guzman thought. Sear had to cross the street while also moving past the cul-de-sac entry, but he would eventually reach Guzman's position. If it came down to a nonlethal capture or his own safety, there was only one call to make: "Wilson! Williams! Take him down."

Guzman heard the sounds of two silenced guns as both men pulled the triggers in single-fire mode. A brief pause, and then the sounds of the weapons firing in three-round burst mode. Guzman was puzzled - they shouldn't have missed given they were just as good shots as he was. Guzman dropped his face below the line of the trunk again and saw Sear's feet - he was apparently still standing. Sear's feet had turned to face the opposite direction, back towards the cul-de-sac and Guzman's teammates.

Guzman took advantage of this opportunity to poke his head out of cover and unload a few bursts of his MP5. Guzman was positive that his shots were headed directly towards center mass, but Sear remained standing. Sear didn't, in fact, move at all. He had planted his feet and was leveling his pistol at Wilson and Williams. "West! Take him down!" Guzman commanded.

Guzman saw Sear's body rock to the left as Alan West, far off to his left, fired at Sear. Guzman imagined he could see the streak through the air, the tracer as a bullet rocketed from the top-right of Guzman's vision towards the bottom-left to hit Sear. There was a bright spot in Guzman's vision where the bullet had impacted Sear's right shoulder, but Guzman couldn't see any visible sign of impact on Sear. The weapon had definitely hit, though - Sear's temporary imbalance spoke to that fact. The sound of the rifle report reached Guzman's ears nearly a second later, as Sear straightened up and leveled his pistol for another shot at James and Michael.

Had West missed? He was firing near the effective range limit of his M24 SWS - only about 800 meters with the 7.62x51mm NATO rounds he was using, and West was close to 700 meters away.

Guzman blinked a few times, clearing his vision. He  _ could _ in fact see the faint remnant of a straight line through the air - West must be using tracer rounds. The obvious trajectory confirmed that the round had impacted Sear's right shoulder. Guzman eyed Sear's shoulder. It was not a bloody mess. That was problematic. There was in fact no evidence that Sear had been hit...

Curious.

How could the bullet impart momentum on Sear but not contact him? Guzman stopped to think for a moment, watching as Sear peppered shots into the car Williams and Wilson were crouched behind. As Guzman watched, West fired again, hitting Sear with another round. There was no tracer this time, but once again the brief flash of light seared into Guzman's retinas. Guzman blinked - the light wasn't actually that bright; just a quick pop - and again saw Sear temporarily unbalanced, stumbling and touching the ground with a hand to help keep himself upright. As his spine unfurled he reached a hand up to his right temple and rubbed for a moment, easing some unseen pain.

"The bullets aren't harming him!" Michael said over the radio.

"Pump him full of bullets until it's only metal inside him. If there ain't any organs left, doesn't matter if the hot metal doesn't hurt." James replied. Guzman could hear the grin in his voice. James was reloading as Michael shot at Sear. As James finished speaking, he stood and began firing three-round bursts at Sear's center mass. Sear took a step forward,  _ towards _ the bullets, and continued to fire. The bullets, rather than hitting him, however, just evaporated into thin air.

That was it.

Evaporated. Guzman fumbled with a magazine at his belt, pulling it free of its pouch. He tried to prise a bullet from the top end, but it wasn't very effective with his gloved hands. With a grunt of frustration, he tapped the open end of the magazine against the asphalt a few times -  _ Gently! Don't want to risk a bullet accidentally detonating, _ he thought - until the top bullet started to worm free. Now able to grab it more effectively, Guzman pulled it out by the base. He set the magazine down, then peered over the trunk of the car he was covering behind. Seeing that Sear was distracted with James and Michael, Guzman took a second to judge the distance between him and Sear. The street wasn't particularly wide, but Sear was closer to Wilson and Williams now, and Guzman didn't really have time to fuck around with getting more bullets out with his clumsy, gloved fingers.

Guzman tossed the bullet at Sear - gently, underhanded. His suspicions were confirmed when the bullet melted into slag and the viscous globule splattered against Sear's back before showering on the asphalt beneath him.

The bullets weren't hitting him because they were evaporating first. Lead had a boiling point:  _ I don't know what it is _ , Guzman thought.  _ Though it's  _ fucking _ hot. _

"His power isn't contact-based!" Guzman hissed quietly into his comms, hoping Wilson and Williams could hear. He didn't really want Sear to realize they had discovered the nature of his power. The current status quo was working for Sear - he knew he had an advantage over the men, who clearly were unaware of how his power worked. Why else would they keep wasting bullets by firing at him, after all? The only real threat Sear posed was that one of his shots would get lucky and hit one of them.

Revealing that the men knew how Sear's power truly worked would upset the status quo. Sear, afraid that his advantage might be slipping, could do something dumb like running at the men and shooting them behind their cover.

Guzman switched his MP5 to full automatic mode and unfolded the stock, cursing as he did so. If Sear was invulnerable to bullets, they'd just have to juggle his attention back and forth between the three members of Alpha so he couldn't really make headway in harming any of them behind their respective cars. This was not so different than a standard firefight, or it was at least a reapplication of standard firefight wisdom. Some estimates said that during war, the US Army expended 1000 bullets for every one hostile incapacitated. Since bullets tended to be incapacitating against most humans, this wasn't really an indictment of their bullets or their weaponry. As a Marine, Guzman would happily accuse their aim of being the problematic factor - but again, you didn't really miss a target 999 times before hitting it. Statistically, if your odds of hitting something were less than 1 in 999, saying your odds were 1 in 1000 wasn't that big a leap to make.

No, it was all about cover. The rounds were spent because mounted weapons and soldiers both worked together to cover their allies' movements. If your ally was moving between cover, or advancing on the enemy, you just hosed the enemy's position with metal so they didn't dare peek a head out. That was how you kept allies alive and well - by preventing the enemy from shooting at them. With a superior force, you could alternate fire, taking it in turns to keep the enemy suppressed.

West fired again, striking Sear. Once again, Sear was pushed sideways. Even if the metal was boiling before it could touch Sear, he was still getting hit with the gaseous molecules. Even if a bunch of the bullet's molecules scattered in the instant the bullet was melting, and then boiling, kinetic energy was mass times velocity  _ squared _ , so the kinetic energy of even some of the bullet's molecules hitting Sear as a gas would exert reasonable force on him.

As Guzman finished his magazine and ducked back behind the car to reload, Wilson took up the rotation, firing at Sear in three-round bursts. By now, realizing the center mass thing wasn't working, Wilson was making a bit of a game out of it, firing bursts first into center mass, then head, then each shoulder in turn, then back to center mass. It was just like practicing at a target dummy back on the range at OPCU headquarters - just less paper.

"West, keep hitting Sear with bullets as fast as you can. Davis, I need Omega to move to our position. We'll keep Sear pinned."

"Omega inbound" Davis said. It was obvious at this point they weren't going to be able to drive Sear into the trap Omega had set to take him down non lethally.  _ I kinda doubt this ends non lethally for everyone involved, _ Guzman thought.

The tempo of West's bullets increased, and Guzman heard a low growling in his ears. He couldn't make out the source, but it didn't really matter. As Wilson finished his daily round of target practice, Michael Williams took up the rotation. He opted to just keep his gun in full auto, emptying it into Sear. Guzman suspected the effort of melting the bullets was keeping Sear too mentally occupied to fire back at Alpha.  _ Does it require concentration? _ Well, if it wasn't that then it was probably the annoying sensation of getting hit with tiny puffs of hot gas everywhere on his body. Or maybe Sear just wanted to conserve bullets - he had grabbed his gun while trying to quickly evacuate his house, and probably didn't have that many spare magazines; Guzman had already heard him reload once.

They were keeping Sear down. Every so often he would start to advance towards one of them, and Guzman noted that West was using those moments to hit Sear. West's bullets took a little less than a second to travel to Sear, so as long as Sear wasn't moving quickly, he probably didn't make for a difficult target.

Guzman reloaded. As he stood to continue the firing rotation, Sear leveled his gun at the ducking Michael Williams. Guzman saw what was going to happen a second before it did like some sick precognitive video playing out slowly in his head. Sear's wrist flicked from the impact of his gun going off. Sear's aim looked wide from Guzman's perspective, but there was a howl from Michael as the bullet impacted. Guzman froze for half a second before his training kicked in.  _ If we stop suppressing Sear, we're all dead. _

Over the sound of the suppressed MP5 - still very loud, but not deafening - tapping away in his hands, Guzman heard James' voice. "Williams down! He's not dead...the top of his ear, I think. Maybe grazed his skull. Still bleeding all over though. Don't have time to patch it up."

_ Shit. At least he's okay. _ Guzman thought.

"Team Alpha. Ironclad is on-site." As Davis' words sunk in to Guzman's consciousness, the low growling resolved itself into the sound of a motorcycle engine, off to Guzman's right. The engine rose in pitch as its rider turned the corner and accelerated towards them. Ironclad accelerated as he approached Sear, moving faster and faster and headed dead towards him.

_ He's not going to stop, _ Guzman realized. But then Ironclad feathered the brake, the motorcycle tipping forwards. Guzman used the motion to throw himself between Sear and James Wilson as the bike's momentum carried it onwards in Ironclad's path. The motorcycle was following Ironclad as his upwards motion petered out and he began descending, the bike about to hit him in midair. Ironclad reached out a hand and touched the ground, as if to do a handspring, and in the moment his hand held contact with the asphalt, the motorcycle's momentum changed entirely.

The bike looked like a Harley, and Guzman could see why it would be Ironclad's bike of choice - lots of metal to grab onto with his power. The great size of the bike made it appear impossible that it would move so nimbly, but clearly Ironclad's power was capable of great acceleration - as his motion carried his body over his hand and down onto the street, the Harley veered up over Sear's head. The Harley hovered there for a moment ( _ Ironclad's power... _ , Guzman thought) as all of the metal slagged off and into a molten disc over Sear's head ( _...and Sear's power. _ ).

Ironclad stood upright next to Sear as all of the plastic and rubber pieces of the Harley clattered off to the side. At his back, the top of a camping/hiking backpack opened, and a massive stack of thick iron plates floated out before dispersing to cover his entire body in thick square plates of iron.

  
_ Iron-clad, _ Guzman thought. Their entire strategy had depended on fighting the two Parahumans separately. And now, here they were, together - bulletproof and ready to fight.


	6. Improvisation 1.4

_ It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. _ \- Sun Tzu,  _ The Art of War _

James Wilson's adrenaline surged through his veins. Guzman was a bit more of a tactician, which is why he was team lead - but Guzman had a habit of carefully considering his next move in firefights, and Wilson was more of a shoot-from-the-hip type. This was true both metaphorically and literally - Guzman's preferred style of combat was much more mobile than his team members', and for that reason he had opted for a barrel laser and a more minimal holographic sight than his colleagues had. Guzman's MP5K-PDW was set to three-round burst, and he stood, sighting at near where Ironclad's head would be before squeezing off three bursts of fire. Nine bullets in all.

All nine of Wilson's bullets dinged off of Ironclad's armor plates, but this was still valuable information to Guzman. He suspected West would repeat the experiment, and indeed he did a moment later. West had chambered a tracer round again and Guzman was easily able to follow the straight line to one of Ironclad's armor plates. The bullet was clearly embedded there; flattened and half buried in the armor. Guzman pondered this for a second - getting hit by one of those bullets was equivalent to a twelve-pound bowling ball hitting you at somewhere north of seventy miles an hour. It had made sense that Sear could remain standing to some degree: a lot of the bullet's mass was dispersing as it melted and then boiled. But for Ironclad to remain standing...well, his armor panels were absorbing immense amounts of energy, and Guzman suspected they still had to be smacking into him and bruising him, even as he tried to hold them steady with his power.

Wouldn't be pleasant tomorrow. But they weren't going to take Ironclad down by punching him in his chest a bunch of times, which was effectively all they could do to him as long as he kept his armor panels in place. Shooting Ironclad right now was a waste of bullets, even if the bullets were actually hitting him; Sear was at least significantly stumbled by the bullets hitting him. Guzman fired a burst from his cover into Sear, hoping West would notice through his scope and get the message - best to keep one of them incapactitated somewhat, especially since he was the one with the gun. If Sear was distracted trying to stand up straight, then the fearsome combo of Sear and Ironclad wouldn't be able to go to work.

Their duo was so powerful because of the way their powers synergized. Ironclad could pass his armor panels to Sear, who would melt them. Ironclad could control the metal within his range regardless of whether it was solid or liquid, so he would take the molten metal and launch it at foes.  _ If Sear can't perform the heating stage of the process, then all they can do is hit us hard with metal, rather than hitting us hard  _ and _ burning the shit out of us, _ Guzman realized. He fired another three rounds at Sear.

_ Well, that and they're both bulletproof. Apparently. That makes them powerful, too. At least as far as being gangbangers goes, _ Guzman thought sarcastically. An intel screwup, that was, missing the fact that not only was Sear bulletproof, the bullets  _ evaporated _ before they could touch his skin because his power wasn't touch-based, but rather a small aura around him.

West either saw Guzman switch targets or had a similar thought process because a moment later, Sear rocked back from an SWS bullet. Guzman saw the telltale pop of light again before Sear stood up and fired into the car James and the bleeding Michael were covering behind.  _ Wait. He's holding a gun. Why is it that my bullets vaporize him, but his gun doesn't melt? _ Then, like a cloud moving out from in front of the sun, it was suddenly so  _ obvious _ .  _ He's disabling his power in his right hand and the area around the gun so his gun doesn't deform or melt; it's pretty much useless if the barrel loses its precisely-machined shape. _

"West," Guzman said into comms. "His gun isn't melting. Shoot his hand."

"Roger," West replied. His voice was full of grim determination; Michael getting shot had galvanized the three remaining Alpha members. Guzman suspected on any other day Alan would make some joke about the outlandishness of trying to hit a target that small at the 600-plus meters from which he was firing. But not now; now Alan saw the logic and was happy to inflict some painful revenge upon the man who had taken down their colleague.

There was a pause of a few seconds; presumably West was switching out his magazine for one with more tracer rounds. Guzman held his breath for a moment nervously, not daring to draw attention to himself. The two sides were at something of a stalemate: Sear was failing to shoot anyone but would damage them if he did, while Guzman, Wilson, and West were having no issues shooting Sear and Ironclad but couldn't hurt them no matter how much they did. The two sides were each at separate equilibria, but Alpha's was stable while the villains' was unstable. If the villains realized this - realized that they had something to gain and nothing to lose by changing up the current situation - then Guzman didn't particularly fancy his odds being this close and this vulnerable. In the intensity of a firefight, time slowed down in strange slices, individual moments stretching to fill an hour while minutes rushed by. It had probably only been about fifteen seconds since Ironclad arrived: West had been firing a round every few seconds and had only fired a few, while the slagged Harley still floated above Sear's head.

Guzman saw the tracer and the flash as another 175-grain SWS round was sacrificed to Sear's aura. From the tracer Guzman guessed that the round would have missed Sear entirely, passing beneath his arm and next to his hip, but it had apparently passed close enough to his skin to be vaporized like the rest of the bullets that "hit" him. West was close, and the tracer would help him correct.

A pop of light, and another round missed: this time above Sear's arm. Why did only the sniper bullets make the lightshow? Probably something to do with the kinetic energy. Didn't matter.

The third bullet hit. The gun was gone and most of Sear's right hand too. All those fine bones and joints and tendons...

Guzman stood up to take advantage of the distraction caused by the outpouring of blood from Sear. Both villains had believed themselves bulletproof, and Guzman aimed to take advantage of the confusion they'd doubtless be feeling. Guzman stood and brought his gun up, scanning for a visible gap in Ironclad's armor. Seeing none in the fraction of a second he looked, he lined up his holographic sights on Sear's bloody stump. Across the street, Wilson was standing and taking aim at the villains as well.

Either Ironclad was not feeling any confusion or he realized the stalemate had evaporated. Motion by James caught Guzman's eye. He glanced over, and realized what had caught his eye: Michael Williams' gun, levitating in midair and pointing towards James Wilson.

"Wilson!  _ Get down! _ " Guzman shouted as loud as he could at his teammate.

Wilson immediately complied without attempting to assess the wisdom of the instruction; the hesitation of second-guessing a teammate's urgent commands in a firefight was a natural habit the team work hard to break. The quick response may have saved his life. In his haste to get the shot off, Ironclad overcorrected, dipping the barrel of Michael's MP5 too far towards the asphalt. A single suppressed shot went off.

"Fuck," Guzman heard James say. "Hit my calf. Bleeding." It was much better than it could have been.

Hadn't Michael's MP5 been on full-auto fire from when they were rotating suppressing fire on Sear? Guzman was pretty sure it had.

Huh.

Guzman looked down at his own gun. The trigger was polymer. Ironclad must have fired by manually manipulating some metal part of the firing mechanism and caused it to jam up, preventing the next bullet from being able to fire even if it loaded into the chamber.

"James. Safe your gun then eject the magazine and chambered round. Do Michael's too."

"Shit...okay." Guzman could hear James grunting through the pain.

Well, the situation had considerably worsened. It was now effectively a two-on-two: Guzman and West versus Ironclad and Sear. Except Alpha's weapons mostly wouldn't work against the villains and they had superpowers.

Ironclad gestured at the metal disc hovering over Sear's head and brought it in front of himself, making a crushing motion with his hands. The metal disc compacted into a tight ball in front of his chest. Interesting - apparently there was some somatic component to his metallo-kinesis. He held the ball still, appearing to wait for something.

West fired another round at Sear's bleeding hand...

Apparently, that was what Ironclad was waiting for. He eyed West's position -

...the tracer forming a clear line down to the pavement where the bullet had missed...

\- and launched the sphere of metal at a forty-five degree angle up into the air -

...a line that could be traced straight back to West's position.

\- accelerating it away from himself until it was at the edge of his range.

Guzman shouted "West! Incoming," even as another bullet struck the pavement in front of the villains.

Could Ironclad possibly hit West, at that range? Did his power confer some bonus to an understanding of projectile physics if the projectile was metal? Had he practiced? If Guzman had that power, he suspected this type of molten artillery shelling is exactly what  _ he'd _ practice...

Guzman counted the seconds.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five, and the sphere of liquid looked like it was descending again...

Six.

Seven. " _ Oh shit _ ," Guzman heard over comms.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven, and the sphere looked like it hit awfully, uncomfortably close to where Guzman thought West had emplaced himself.

"West! Are you there?" West didn't reply. The mass of the metal didn't really matter, only the angle and speed of the launch. At a perfect forty-five degree angle, he'd only have to accelerate the metal to about a tenth of the speed of one of West's sniper bullets; the metal posed a risk for reasons other than massive speed...

_ Fuck. Now it's one-on-two. _


	7. Improvisation 1.5

_ It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. _ \- Sun Tzu,  _ The Art of War _

Guzman suspected he didn't have long with his gun. Aiming to make the most of it, he stood up and squeezed the trigger, holding it down in full-auto mode as long as he dared. He was aiming at Sear's bloody wrist: there wasn't much of a hand left at this point, after the abuse his forelimb had taken from the team's MP5s. Guzman just kept the weapon as steady as he could, and as soon as Ironclad started to notice him, he ducked back down behind the car.

Guzman flipped the fire select toggle to "safe" and slipped the shoulder strap over his head. He set the weapon down before realizing that the safety axle was metal and could probably be manipulated by Ironclad if he was familiar enough with the gun's architecture. Ironclad had clearly spent some time studying the workings of at least some guns; he had been able to jury-rig Michael's MP5K to fire without actually manipulating the trigger. With that in mind, Guzman hit the magazine eject and unchambered the current round.

Guzman peeked out from behind the car. Ironclad was trying a torn-off piece of his tshirt around Sear's wrist. He had increased the overlap in all of the iron plates on his back - the side facing Guzman - by sliding the metal plates over each other so that he could open a gap in the front. He was crouched over Sear, wrapping the shirt in an attempt to stop some of the bleeding. It wasn't having a visible effect, but it might make the difference between safety and bleeding out in the long run. The edges of the iron plates nearest Sear were glowing a bright orange-yellow.

_ Why is he doing that? Why heat up the plates? The molten metal reduces the armor strength. Not that I'm gonna pump through a sheet of liquid iron with a pistol round, but why risk it? He's not sure the sniper is out... _

One of the plates had completely melted now. Ironclad launched the pile of smoking incandescence at Guzman's hiding spot behind the car. Guzman considered himself lucky that Ironclad was distracted with his makeshift bandaging: the lump of metal went far over Guzman's head and into somebody's front yard.

_ He can sense where I am because of my gun and the other metal I have on me. _ In preparation for the mission, the men had been issued ceramic knives, and they were each only carrying their MP5K-PDW submachine guns - no other metal. They did each have some spare magazines, though: they had been prepared to force Sear into a retreat to Omega's position. Guzman took a deep breath, then set all of his magazines on the ground. If Ironclad was going to shell him, he'd have to keep his position somewhat secret. Guzman peeked out from behind the car to confirm that Ironclad wasn't watching him - he wasn't - before quietly moving to the next parked car in the line, putting distance between himself and the villains.

Guzman saw Ironclad's hand move again, pointing another of his molten armor plates at Guzman's location. The metal was going to hit this time; Ironclad had compensated for his previous aim being too far away.

_ Shit, _ Guzman thought. He dove from the right side of the car to the space in front of its hood, immediately going prone so the canyon formed by the hood of the car and the trunk of the next car would give him some cover. It was the right call - the molten metal splashed when it impacted the sidewalk, some globules of iron splattering on the trunk of the car in front of him. Guzman could see Ironclad standing, lining up for another shot on him.

"Shit," Guzman said aloud this time. Pushing up his torso with his arms braced on the asphalt, he took off from a sprinter's start and crossed the street, right as another ball of liquid iron splattered in the gap between the cars.

Guzman had crossed the street, luckily placing him near the large OSF van they had all arrived in. He took cover behind it for a moment, slamming his back into the back doors of the van and breathing hard.

_ Why isn't Ironclad fucking with the cars and this van? Probably too much metal; that must be why he rides a motorcycle... _

Guzman terminated the line of thought. He was safe behind the massive cover of the van for a few seconds, and he didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. He needed an element of surprise to have a chance at taking the two villains down when they were together; how could he do something unexpected?

Guzman dropped into a crouch and stealthily walked up the side of the van, rolling his feet from heel to toe so his boots didn't make noise as they contacted the asphalt. He yelped with surprise as a ball of molten metal splashed on the pavement a few feet in front of him and dove backwards, landing hard on his tailbone.

_ Fuck, that hurt. _ But worse than the physical pain - he thought while rubbing his backside with a gloved hand - how had Ironclad deduced his location? Guzman was reasonably sure he had been quiet, and Ironclad wasn't randomly shelling all around the OSF van with balls of metal, so he had to have some specific intel. Guzman generally believed that if an opponent appeared to know something you were trying to keep secret, you should assume they were totally aware of it. Worst-case scenario, you're extra careful. Best-case scenario, you're not taken by surprise.

So assuming Ironclad was continually aware of his location - how? The villain was standing in the street - Guzman confirmed with a glance around the back of the van - and he was helping Sear to stand upright. So he wasn't peeking under the van's chassis, and he hadn't been earlier when Guzman was covering behind cars. Okay, what else? The cars (and the OSF van) on this side of the street were all pointed forwards, towards the villains, so it's not like they were looking in the side mirrors or some shit. Guzman had removed all of the metal from his body - he confirmed by patting each magazine storage pouch and confirming his knife was, in fact, not metal.

Guzman peeked around the corner just in time to see Ironclad launching another molten armor plate at him; he switched sides of the van and winced as the windshield of the car immediately behind it shattered under the projectile, the ball igniting a small fire in the seat upholstery. Guzman scuttled around the sidewalk side of the van, poking his head up to see through the passenger window and out the windshield. All of the armor plates on Ironclad's right side were glowing molten now, and Ironclad had spaced them out further away from himself, clearly uncomfortable with the heat. Ironclad turned to look at him.

"Omega ETA niner-zero seconds," Davis' voice informed him. Fuck. He couldn't hold out another ninety seconds; Ironclad had taken all three of his squadmates down in the first forty-five seconds after he arrived on the scene, and Guzman had spent the next forty-five seconds barely avoiding mini-meteors. Guzman could not sustain that entire timeframe, again, with Ironclad's aim this perfect.

As if to punctuate that statement, a ball of molten iron came flying past the front of the van, splattering on the sidewalk. Guzman rolled backwards, once again sliding around to the back of the van. How was Ironclad aiming this perfectly?

_ The comms. The  _ fucking _ comm equipment! _

Guzman tore the plastic earpiece out of his ear. It was clipped to the back of his collar before its wire ran down his pack to a radio unit on his belt. Guzman ripped all of them off, hanging the wire over one of the door handles on the back of the OSF van. Not only could he deny Ironclad information on his location; he could feed him false information. He crawled up the side of the OSF van, peeking around the hood -

\- to see Ironclad gesturing at another molten armor plate, pulling it out of the overlapping field in front of him to launch it  _ at the back of the OSF van! His plan had worked! _

All of the plates around Ironclad were glowing now. He had begun rotating them around his body slowly, periodically removing the hottest from near Sear so that they had a chance to cool down. He had spaced the plates out now so they still overlapped but weren't actually touching; as he rotated the plates around his body, Guzman could occasionally get a glimpse of his face through a gap. He was visibly uncomfortable, sweating and with a red face.

Between Ironclad's need to get airflow between panels and his use of plates as ammunition, the gaps in his armor were constantly expanding. Sear had collapsed on the ground and was holding Ironclad's makeshift bandage to his wrist with his other hand. He didn't really look like he was in any sort of fighting shape. If Guzman could survive a little longer, Ironclad might be forced to open a real gap in his armor, and Sear was more or less out of the fight.

Guzman got some more good news. An M24 SWS rifle round with tracer smacked into one of Ironclad's armor plates. Alan West was back online, apparently. After a brief pause, the next round went to the left, towards Sear, and there was a quick burst of light. A few more seconds and another round, another burst of light.

The pattern continued for four or five rounds.  _ Why was West wasting rounds shooting at the bulletproof one? And he wasn't even really shooting at Sear - he was shooting more at the gap between the two, close enough to Sear that the rounds were vaporizing. _

There wasn't much West could shoot at on Ironclad - occasionally small gaps would form as he rotated his armor plates, but they were somewhat random and unpredictable. As Guzman watched, though, he caught a glimpse of Ironclad's face. He looked more pained than he had before, visibly grimacing.    The armor plates continued to rotate, a little more quickly.

Guzman could reduce the armor further. He loudly stepped out of cover and stood still long enough for Ironclad to meet his eyes through a gap in the plates. Ironclad gestured at his plates and another one launched at Guzman, who easily dodged. Ironclad's aim was not as precise without sensing Guzman's position with metal, apparently, and Guzman had had plenty of warning, having baited the attack.

Guzman repeated the tactic, shouting at Ironclad, dodging again. Ironclad shifted the plates to cover the new gaps formed in his armor.

West had been continuously putting rounds into the gap between Sear and Ironclad.  _ Why is he wasting bullets? _ And then Guzman figured out what West must be thinking. The plates closer to Sear were visibly hotter, and Ironclad was pouring sweat. He was effectively in a sauna, unable to cool himself off because he was completely surrounded by metal radiating heat onto him. In a normal fight, Sear would pick and choose which metal to heat - but in his distracted and crippled state, he was clearly just running his power at full blast to keep himself bulletproof. Ironclad wasn't willing to abandon his partner to capture, so he was standing close by - and it was that distance that was causing him issues.

With a howl of frustration and pain, Ironclad exploded his metal plates outward, placing them all between himself and West, trying to keep his cover from the sniper while sacrificing his cover from Guzman. Guzman stood and pulled his ceramic knife from its sheath, running to the next car in line.

West fired a tracer round at the armored wall in front of Ironclad, aiming directly for the villain. The bullet embedded harmlessly in the wall, but the molten plate it impacted flexed backwards, bubbling towards Ironclad. Ironclad grunted with frustration and effort, making a pushing motion at the plate with his hand, pushing it back into shape in the wall.

Guzman took advantage of this momentary distraction, moving to the next car in the line. He was now back at the cul-de-sac opening where this had all started; he could see the feet of his downed colleagues across the cul-de-sac entrance, poking out from behind the car they were using as cover. He hoped they were okay, but without comms he couldn't check secretly and he didn't want to remind Ironclad they were there.

Guzman licked his lips. He was as close to Ironclad and Sear as he could get and still be in cover; the next good distraction he got, he'd have to go for a takedown.

Another sniper bullet embedded itself in the liquid metal wall. Ironclad again turned, gesturing to address the problem, and Guzman took immediate advantage of Ironclad's shifting attention. He ducked out from behind the car and sprinted straight for Ironclad. Ironclad saw him and rotated his torso, swinging an arm across his body to move the molten metal wall into Guzman. Guzman couldn't dodge sideways and couldn't stop fast enough.

He took a deep breath...

Guzman leaped forwards, tucking into a roll midair. He felt immense heat but couldn't look up to examine what was happening; he was tumbling through the air.

Guzman's left hand touched asphalt and he kicked his legs over, landing on his back. His momentum kept his feet moving forwards and he pushed off the asphalt, hard, with his hands to come up into a crouch on his feet. He brought his right hand up, the knife held in his closed fist, as the sound of a rifle shot reached his ears. The sound took two seconds to travel and the bullet took one and West had hit something a second ago  _ what had West hit _ and Ironclad was on the ground blood blossoming from his torso between his left shoulder and his neck.

Guzman dropped to his knees pulling a pair of plastic ziptie handcuffs from where they were tucked in his belt with his left hand and grabbed Ironclad's left hand with his and pulled it through the loop cinching it still holding the knife with his right then pulling Ironclad's right hand through the loop and tightening it ignoring Ironclad's wince of pain as his shoulder was jostled.

Guzman grabbed a long ziptie from his belt and trussed Ironclad's ankles together with it before doing the same to Sear's legs he couldn't really handcuff the guy with only one hand.

"You both need to turn off your powers right now. Medical help is on the way for your hand but if either of you try to use your powers then we can't guarantee medical help and my colleague will get you," gesturing in the direction of West, "or I will," Guzman finished, brandishing his knife.

...and he exhaled, long and hard, before drawing a deep breath of fresh air into his lungs.


	8. Improvisation 1.6 - Debrief

_ It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. _ \- Sun Tzu,  _ The Art of War _

When Omega showed up, they injected Sear and Ironclad with a general anesthetic. The anesthetic would keep them unconscious while Omega transferred them to the OPCU office in downtown Los Angeles.

OSF Omega had undergone additional medical training so they had some hope of corralling uncooperative Parahumans, but after verifying that Michael Williams wasn't going to bleed out on the asphalt, Michael and James opted to wait for actual EMTs to arrive. Michael's bleeding had mostly stopped on account of the nasty-looking scab that was crusted on the left side of his skull. James Wilson had a much more serious injury - the bullet was probably still in his calf, so they were just minimizing the bleeding until the paramedics arrived. The medic on OSF Omega didn't feel particularly optimistic about the outcome of a surgery performed on city streets with the limited gear he had.

Guzman had retrieved his comm gear and could hear most of the other teams discussing their various tasks. This was their first operation, and they were tentatively employing a policy of no radio discipline once the op had finished so that members of one OSF team could ask for others' help with their respective cleanup jobs. Delta had been incapacitated quickly by Ironclad and was dealing with the aftermath of that battle near the setup meet location. Omega had two jobs: dismantling whatever gear they had set up to facilitate Parahuman capture and ensuring the Parahumans got back to base quickly. Guzman suspected that, given his team's injury rate, Omega was eager to get Sear and Ironclad more restrained, and they both needed serious medical aid as well - both things that could be accomplished at the OPCU office.

"West! You there?"

"That I am, captain. Want me to come join you?"

"Yeah, do you need medical aid?"

"No - I didn't actually get hit. Damn close thing though. When that...Shit, I guess it used to be a Harley?"

They both chuckled at that. Guzman suspected both their nerves were on edge from the battle they had narrowly won, but the sheer surreality of the whole thing hadn't really set in yet. Or it was just starting to set in, and it was hard not to find an artillery Harley somewhat preposterous.

West continued, and Guzman could hear the sound of him moving - harder breathing, heavy metal doors opening and slamming shut. "Anyway, when it came flying, it was up in the air for a surprisingly long time. I had a few seconds' warning - if I had tried to dodge before then, I might have just ended up making it worse, kinda needed to nail down the trajectory first, you know?"

Guzman nodded, not that Alan could see it, but it had taken  _ him _ a few seconds just to establish that the flying orb of metals even had the range to hit West's position, let alone the precise aim.

"So the warning helped, but I could tell at some point it wasn't gonna hit me. It ended up hitting the corner of the building though - took out a massive chunk of the roof and wall, and I was worried the roof was gonna cave near there. So I relocated to the other side of the stairwell access - gave me some cover from the flaming metal, too. Anyway, I'm gonna jog now, so I'll catch you in a minute."

Guzman had a minute to think. Well, the world record time for a 500-meter dash was somewhere just north of a minute, and West was a little over 600 meters away, and he wasn't going to be on world record pace with an M24 and his other gear. So maybe Guzman had a few minutes.

Today's mission had been a tenuous success at best. The OSF ended up accomplishing the objective - capturing both Parahumans, nonlethally.  _ Probably, _ he reminded himself.  _ Sear wasn't looking too good when Omega loaded him up, but he should make it to base okay. _ That was a win, and Guzman hoped it would look that way to the powerful people watching the outcome of this mission. But exactly half of the twelve people deployed had suffered some serious injury: two members of Alpha and all four Delta members. There was also the issue that there was significant property damage at the site of Delta's encounter.

Guzman looked around. Here, too. On the cul-de-sac side of the street, the damage was mostly limited to the one car that had caught on fire late in the combat. On the opposite side of the street...there were lumps of molten metal in two front yards, 4 cars at least somewhat slagged in molten metal, and a number of bullet holes in car doors. Correction: bullet holes on both sides of the street. Mostly Sear's, from when he was missing with his pistol - but every time he 'missed', he was hitting one of the cars the men were covering behind.

There were a lot of groups that were about to arrive. The OPCU was founded by the ATF and the FBI, and both could claim jurisdiction in OPCU investigations. The OPCU existed to run and support the OSF. The OSF existed to neutralize Parahuman threats. Once the OSF had done its job -  _ As it has here _ , Guzman thought, with no small relief - the FBI and ATF would handle the drug and weapons bust on Sear's house.

The FBI and ATF were doctors that diagnosed problems, gathering intel and prescribing OPCU targets. The OPCU was the surgeon who actually removed the offending problem. And the OSF?

_ We're the scalpel, _ Guzman thought with a wicked grin.

In addition to the FBI and ATF, EMTs would be showing up to attend to the injured OSF members and any injured civilians. Beat cops would be arriving to cordon off Sear's house until it could be properly investigated. OPCU employees would be showing up to assess and repair collateral damage. The OPCU employees would also help remove all signs that a battle had ever taken place here, although Guzman wasn't exactly sure how they were going to un-melt the metal that had adhesed itself to many of the surfaces around the street. And in that person's front yard. And the massive pile of armor plates melted together into some sort of lump in the middle of -

"Captain! Nice work." Alan West jogged up to Guzman and grinned.

"Say, West, is that - " Guzman began, indicating the large heap. " - all of Ironclad's armor plates? That he made a wall with?"

West grunted. "Doesn't look like a lot of metal when it's just in a pile, but it must be hundreds of pounds. When you went running at him, he separated about half the barrier and tried to swing it around in between you and him."

Guzman nodded. "And that's when you got your shot in."

West smirked - it wasn't condescending, but it  _ was _ full of pride. "No sir. Bullet travel time is about one second from my position."

Guzman raised an eyebrow. "That's why you were loading all tracer rounds at the end there."

"Yeah, luckily I packed a mag that was just tracers."

"That's how he knew where you were," Guzman said. "I saw him looking at the tracer in the air a few times right before he, uh...launched the Harley at you."

Alan winced. "Yeah, I had been meaning to look into a few different tracer types. After this, I'm thinking I want to switch to subdued tracer rounds. They'll give me 100 yards or something before the pyrotechnics start going, make my location harder to pin down. Better for night vision, too."

"What about efficacy? Does it matter?"

"For the M24, I don't think so. I think the velocity's the same and all, though they might do less damage on impact."

"Ah. Right, less mass," Guzman said. "Might be worth stocking a few different types, then. I also figured we could experiment with some incendiary ammo, some more esoteric stuff too."

"So what's up with Omega? They take in the two?"

"Yeah," Guzman confirmed. "They're RTB."

"What's gonna happen with their wounds?"

"Uh, I think they're getting stabilized at the LA office, and then they're on the next helicopter out to Chapparal."

This was the OPCU's plan for dealing with the Parahumans they captured. The OPCU was building a secure facility out in the Mojave desert near Edwards Air Force Base. The facility was actually a series of buildings, including medical facilities, living quarters, and a courthouse. The facility's location and design was designed to sidestep the problems posed by superpowers, rather than address them: Sear and Ironclad would be kept in buildings that contained no metal within the range of their powers. They would receive a fair trial with judges and jurors from the correct jurisdiction - in this case, the State of California - but all would be flown out to the courthouse, which was specially built to avoid offering an environment in which powers could be used.

For the most part, the containment strategy consisted of literally just spreading the Parahumans out from any contact with each other or any substrate upon which their powers could operate. They'd add new buildings as needed, and that's where the large, flat space of the Mojave came in useful.

The medical facilities at the OPCU office were minimal, but existed for one primary reason: to hook apprehended Parahumans to an IV anesthetic. When villains were neutralized in an OSF operation, they would be anesthetized on-site by Omega with an epi-pen style injector: a single dose cartridge in a reusable dispenser. This would keep them under until the OSF van got them to headquarters, where the IV would be inserted and any pressing wounds stabilized. A helicopter on the roof would carry the unconscious villains to Chapparal, only about an hour's flight.

"Speaking of which," West began, "how are Wilson and Williams?"

Guzman nodded over at them. "You can ask them yourself."

West nodded his appreciation. He deposited his rifle in the OSF van before wandering over to his squadmates.

* * *

"To be honest, sir, I feel like we got spanked."

Guzman was standing in the mission briefing room. The EMTs had collected Wilson and Williams in short order. Guzman had given West the option to accompany his squadmates to the hospital; Guzman would have preferred to decompress emotionally with them, but the three team captains needed to debrief with Jon Davis as soon as possible following the op.

Jon Davis nodded. "Honestly, I feel the same way. I suspect it's a feeling we'll be getting used to. The US military is the best in the world because of training and funding. We're not military anymore, but the reality of both hasn't changed."

_ Indeed it hasn't. If anything, the funding and training are  _ better _ now, _ Guzman thought.

Davis continued. "We've gone from being the biggest fish in our pond to being the smallest, weakest fish in this one. Powerful Parahumans generally believe they can engage arbitrary numbers of unpowered humans, and they're generally right. We have an advantage because we pick our engagements, attack with surprise, and marshal well-trained forces."

Davis turned to gaze at the map of the city spread out over the briefing room table. "But once we attack, we've picked the engagement and sprung our surprise - we've acquired as much advantage as we can, and it either will be enough or it won't."

Davis took a deep breath. "I apologize, gentlemen," he began while eyeing each of the three team captains. "My plan was that Alpha would drive Sear off-site, so that when Ironclad arrived, he could be engaged right there - right at the site of the battle." Davis pointed at the map, where Sear's cul-de-sac had been circled. This was here from their pre-mission briefing; they were consulting it again as Davis spoke. "The goal was that Sear and Ironclad not be permitted to fight together. You saw how potent that combination can be," he said while gesturing at Guzman. "Had the plan worked as imagined, Alpha would be the hammer that drove Sear into the anvil of Omega. Even if he had not cooperated, Omega could have held him there. That way, the two Parahumans are kept separate until both are captured."

"And when Ironclad arrived home, Sear would be nowhere in sight - and he would be caught between Alpha and the pursuing Delta," Davis continued. "You see, the point of stationing Omega so far away was so that Sear and Ironclad could not fight together. Yet they did fight together, and it was this very distance that almost led to the operation's failure. It is only thanks to the improvisation of Alpha that the operation was recovered. So I apologize for concocting a plan whose key conceit - that they not fight together - almost caused it to backfire."

"Sir-" Jack Lewis, the Delta team captain began. "If my team had not been incapacitated so quickly..."

Jon Davis started to raise a hand, but it was Guzman who cut him off. "I don't think so, Jack. Sear was...honestly pretty clever. All of our intel - video, eyewitness reports, whatever else - held that his power was touch-based. Sear's been hiding the true extent of his power - or at least, the aura part of it - for all of his cape life, just as an ace in the hole for something like this."

Davis nodded and spoke. "Indeed, Jack. I think there are a few contingencies we needed to address today that we weren't prepared for. In general, we need to do a better job preparing for contingencies - and getting you guys used to all types of combat scenarios. I think none of us knew what to expect today, but let's make that happen less and less every operation."

"We'll debrief tomorrow, first thing after PT, everyone who's well enough. Before then, each of you please talk with your squads. Figure out some things you weren't prepared for and generalize it; we'll look into implementing the changes in our preparation for the future."

Guzman chimed in. "For example, what to do if the target has an aspect of their power we don't know about."

Davis grinned. "Or a  _ power _ we don't know about."

Guzman thought about it. There were a lot of things he had found himself wanting during the op - better physics education and knowledge, for example. And Omega's medic could have patched up at least Williams and maybe even Wilson if they had the contents of an ambulance; why not stock an OSF van with medical supplies?

Guzman replied to Davis: "I agree we need more contingencies, sir." Omega had been prepared for a nonlethal capture of Sear but Alpha hadn't really been. Guzman had only forced a surrender because of the fact that he had a ceramic knife - and both of the Parahuman villains were bleeding out on the asphalt at his feet.

Guzman voiced a thought that had been simmering in his head since the operation. "Sir, I think we should also revise our comm usage somewhat. I was unable to communicate with West and we didn't really have a contingency in place. Furthermore, I think we should consider only using our designation on the radios..."

At this, Davis gestured for Guzman to continue. "Well, sir, we should discuss it more at a later date, but we are trying to avoid any kind of reprisals."

Davis considered it, nodding slowly. "Right. Well, we have a lot to improve on. We'll discuss more at tomorrow's meeting. To address the issue originally raised, though: I think we'll look into some kind of psychology consulting for the OSF teams. We're a little off the beaten path with what we're doing here, but the United States has invested significant amounts of money into each of you. Making sure that we're all in the right mindset and have reasonable expectations and responses is only a good investment."

Jack looked somewhat displeased at this development. "To be clear," Davis said, turning to him. "This is not an indication that something is wrong. Winning sports teams are beginning to hire sports psychologists - basketball, baseball, and the NFL. The goal isn't to remediate, but to...tune. Think about it as an extension of training, guys. When you spend time doing room clears on the range, it's practicing target recognition and selection. It's making sure your mind falls into the correct pattern, immediately and invariably. This will help with that - it's tuning your mindset so that you slip into those patterns and behaviors more readily."

Davis stood and so did the OSF team captains. "I apologize again, and I'll repeat my assessment of my plan tomorrow during the team debrief. Good work today, all of you. If it weren't for your actions, we would not have been successful. Finish your necessary duties for the day and see to your teammates."

He shook each of their hands, grasping firmly and giving them a genuine smile. It was unusually warm behavior, but congratulations were in order. "I'll see you tomorrow at our team debrief."

Guzman left the room, moving about the rest of his necessary actions without much thought. Most of his work would keep 'til tomorrow morning; the only really important thing was making sure his and his teammates' gear was cleaned and stored properly. He had taken care of his stuff before the briefing, but Wilson and Williams' gear needed tending to.

Guzman walked into the armory to see to their weapons. Alan West was already in there, both Wilson and Williams' weapons lying disassembled and cleaned on the table in front of him.

Guzman sighed. "Alan, you're a lifesaver."

Alan smiled. "Eh, meetings aren't my favorite. Glad I didn't need to go." West gestured him over. "Hey, check this out."

He was pointing down at part of Williams' gun. "Oh shit," Guzman said. "This is the piece of the firing mechanism he must have manually engaged."

"Yeah!" West said. "Look at where it's locked up. I'm not sure this is repairable."

Guzman shrugged. "Not like Uncle Sam can't spot us an MP5."

West laughed.

"Want to go visit James?"

West nodded. "Yeah. I left when Williams was patched up and discharged, but James should be out of surgery soon. Williams was going to wait for him; I came back to finish this stuff." He gestured at both the guns.

Guzman started reassembling James' weapon. "I've got this one; bag the parts there..." The two men finished storing the weaponry and other gear.

Guzman clapped West on the back. "Let's go pick up those two and get a drink. First round's on me."

"Just first round?" West asked teasingly, the skin around his eyes crinkled.

Guzman laughed. "You weigh like 550 pounds between the three of you. I'm on a government salary, man."

The two laughed together.


	9. Interlude 1 - Eliot Ness

A knock at his door startled Eliot Ness from his reverie.

"Hey Eliot. I got the first batch of transcripts from that newest wire tap. Wanna come check 'em out with me?" Frank Basile's voice still had the characteristic of someone who had done serious time at Joliet.

Eliot grunted. "Be out in a second."

He was hopeful about this wiretap. They nearly had all of Capone's stills nailed down. By sheer dumb luck they had somehow managed to get the phone number of one of Capone's still managers. The managers were the on-site bosses, reporting only to Capone's operation itself. The number had been written down on a piece of paper in the pocket of one of Capone's enforcers. Eliot sighed. He couldn't imagine how big of an opportunity they had almost missed - somebody had checked the man's wallet when they dragged him in, of course, but when they booked him, Bill didn't know that. He checked through the wallet again and found the piece of paper with a number scrawled on it.

If Tony - the enforcer who they had now booked - had just bothered to write down the number backwards, or add one to each digit, or even just add one to the last digit, they _would have had nothing_. But Tony didn't - _Well, he's called_ Dumb Tony _for a reason,_ Eliot thought with a shake of his head - and so they had gotten the number of one of Capone's still managers. Apparently, Tony had been planning to spend his entire day... _enforcing_...at one of Capone's less productive stills. Manager there was skimming off the top, or something. And so he had written down the phone number for the other still manager's office so that he could call and ask the guy a question or something.

Which means they got the still manager's phone number from the paper in Tony's pocket. They tapped the phone, and started logging all of its calls.

The still manager made a phone call every day to the same phone number, sometimes multiple times. They now had the phone number for someone directly under Capone in the Chicago Outfit. They tapped _that_ phone, and started logging all of its calls.

Within two weeks they had names and voices attached to most of the managing structure of the Outfit. Better than that, they had an idea of some of the boys in blue who were on Capone's payroll.

_And that's the part that's terrifying,_ Eliot thought. Most cops were fundamentally good people, not trying to get into it just to get some sweet payroll offer from the Outfit. The problem was actually the opposite - most cops got into it in an effort to _stop_ the outfit. They had grown up on the South Side, seeing the violence disorder the Outfit sowed. _The depression had broken most people,_ Eliot thought.

So they decided to join the boys in blue. Get an honorable, steady-paying job. And if they got to occasionally chuck an Outfit perp behind bars, all the better. But once they got to a reasonable position - Inspector, Detective, Chief Inspector - Capone took notice. When Capone's guys approached the very same officers who had joined for ideological reasons - to make a difference - they were the easiest to catch. Their convictions said they couldn't accept the deal, but their gut told them what the Outfit was capable of. They had grown up on the streets, seeing it, daily. They knew that if they refused, they'd turn up facedown in the Chicago River where someone would find them if they were lucky, more likely in Lake Michigan where nobody would. And they couldn't improve the world dead. They had joined up to make a difference. They had joined up to improve the city. They couldn't do that dead. So if the only choice was between being left alive to make a difference and being dead, where they couldn't - well, then alive won every time.

And if their family got to eat a little better because of it, if they didn't have to pack up and head out West to California, then that was just a bonus. Besides, Capone was gonna get someone in this department on payroll. He had to with that kind of persuasive argument. _May as well be me,_ Eliot suspected the average detective thought. _At least I'll be able to control a little how much bad comes as a result of this._

Eliot sighed again. Most cops thought they were the only one in their precinct on Capone's payroll. If only. Capone had so much of the city on his side that it would be impossible to prosecute in court, just the sheer farce of so many defendants dragging the trial out.

That's where the wiretaps came in. They could use it as evidence to net a few of the dirty ones, sure. Or they could use it for something much, much better.

Eliot stood up, pulling his suit jacket on and straightening his tie. He much preferred this modern style; the stuff they had been wearing at the start of the decade was ridiculous. He grinned predatorily. _We're gonna cut Capone off at the knees and then pull him apart bit by bit._

* * *

Eliot leaned over, looking for Barney. "We good to go, Barney?"

The Irish man let out a low growl. _He's certainly ready to go,_ Eliot thought. Barney and Martin had been going rounds in the gym all morning in preparation.

Eliot feigned concern. "You guys _did_ pull your punches this morning, right?"

Barney grinned. "Well _I_ certainly did, boss, but I think Martin just punches that soft outta habit."

Martin chose that moment to walk up, raising his Thompson. "Only when it's your lovely feminine face I'm hitting, Barn."

The three advanced towards the front entrance. Basile had dropped them off a ways down the street; the others would be advancing from different approaches. _The problem with these speakeasies,_ Eliot thought, _Is that there are lots of secret exits and bolt holes._

Barney consulted his pocket watch as they came up to the back entrance. Fog chilled the air around them, low and heavy from the lake. The pattern in the brickwork at the top of the alleyway was nearly impossible to see, the fog and steam from the speakeasy's chimney swirling together to form a thick white soup.

"Alright. We got fifteen seconds," Barney said. The men counted down in sync, quietly. At 'three', Barney and Martin rushed the wooden door together, not breaking it down so much as obliterating it.

"Bureau of Prohibition!" Eliot roared into the room, his voice audible through the shrieks of surprise. "Get down on the ground!"

The bartender complied, but a man next to him - _Must be some Outfit enforcer,_ Eliot thought - did not. He took off at a sprint, passing through a doorway into the back room. Eliot took off at a sprint after him, readying his Tommy. "Get this room!" He shouted at Barney and Martin. He lept over the prone form of a woman lying down in the doorway, her hands covering her head.

As he entered the hallway, he saw the man disappearing into a doorway on the right at the opposite end. He sprinted through and pointed his Tommy at the fleeing figure, shouting "Freeze!" The fleeing enforcer didn't comply, ripping open a door that led into the still -

\- and coming face-to-face with Bill Gardner. The man was old, but he wasn't _that_ old, and he was still one of the most competent members of Eliot's team.

Bill smiled, his olive skin wrinkling. "Weren't thinking of going anywhere, were we?" He bodily shoved the enforcer back towards Eliot, who caught him and wrenched his hands behind his back. He handed his Thompson to Bill, who traded it to him for a pair of handcuffs. Eliot cuffed the man.

"C'mon," he said. "We got some questions to ask you about your boss back at the Bureau office."

* * *

Two months, twenty stills. The math was simple. Al Capone was going bankrupt. A failed hit on Johnny Torrio had forced an early retirement and Torrio had chosen his trusted bodyguard, Capone, to become the new head of the Outfit. Since his taking of the reins, Capone had been expanding the Outfit's operation aggressively.

_Johnny is a great man,_ Capone thought. Nothing but respect for him. _But he always prefers saving and careful expansion. I'm investing here._

He swirled his moonshine around in his glass, remembering how people had cheered for him at the baseball games.

Baseball. Now that was a sport civilized men could enjoy. It had been just over twenty years since the Cubs had been crowned the best baseball team in America, and Capone was confident this was the year they'd take their title again. (1)

That had been when he was still well-liked enough to go to the games. When he was loved. Even with all of his charity donations, if he went today...well, people would boo him. Especially those from the North Side.

Saint Valentine's Day. Funny how much a man's fortune could change on a single day. To be fair, single men's fortunes had been changing on Saint Valentine's Day for years - but not in quite the same way. Not in the the-streets-are-bathed-in-blood way. Red...the color of love. The color of blood.

The aggressive expansion had been a good idea; the Outfit's income would have been off the charts, soon. Except those _bastards_ at the Bureau had hit him hard, taking most of his stills and breweries, _right after he had emptied the Outfit's war chest to build and open them._

Capone sighed. There was only one thing he could really try.

* * *

Eliot hung up the phone, stunned into a rare moment of silence.

Next to him, Bill Gardner laughed. Eliot was nothing if not full of bravado. That call had been quite unusual, though, he was forced to admit.

"What did ol' Al have to say?" Gardner asked.

"He...uh. He wants to _work something out_." Eliot said, hesitantly, as if saying it aloud might somehow change the reality of it - as if speaking the words might somehow destroy the fragile thing.

"Well, you know what we do now, right?" Bill asked, still grinning.

Eliot shook his head, once, slowly and jerkily. He blinked and shook his head a second time, more smoothly this time.

Bill caught Eliot's eyes. Bill picked up the phone, calling a number he had written on a card in his pocket. "Chicago Tribune? Yes, this is Bill Gardner, over at the Prohibition Bureau." He paused for a second before grinning. "No, this is a pretty big one. I think you'll want it. Can you send someone over?" A shorter pause. "Excellent! Have a nice day."

* * *

Bill walked in the next morning carrying the day's edition of the _Tribune_. He walked to Eliot's office door, knocking on it before walking in and setting the newspaper down on the desk.

The headline: "Prohibition Bureau has Capone Scared?"

Underneath: "Crime Boss Tries to Pay Off Untouchables"

Eliot looked up at him, grinning. "'The Untouchables', eh? How do you feel about it?"

Bill grinned at him as Eliot met his eyes. "When you started recruiting us, I admit I was skeptical. But these guys...this group you've formed here. I mean, there are Barney and Martin, obviously. They'd pick a fight with any number of gangsters looking for trouble."

Eliot snorted. Bill continued. "And they'd win, is the scary thing." Bill shook his head. "And then there are the tacticians...Lyle, who isn't soft -"

_No, the former college football player was not._

"- and Mike and Paul, whose IQs might rival that Einstein guy. Thomas and Samuel, well, they'd never turn, and I think even Capone knows that."

_Indeed,_ Eliot agreed. _It was Thomas who Capone had originally approached with his 'offer'._

Bill continued: "And then there's, well, Joseph, who you know is good through and through -"

_As good a man as he is a driver,_ Eliot thought.

"- and you and me," Bill finished.

Eliot gave Gardner an appraising look before nodding.

Bill took a breath. "All in all, I'd say it's pretty damn good sir. I couldn't think of a more untouchable group of people."

_'The Untouchables.' Has a pretty good ring to it,_ Eliot thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I have no idea if Capone was more of a Cubs or White Sox fan, but he went to baseball games, and this reference seemed a little too perfect to not include; my initial planning for this chapter took place during the World Series and I wrote it up a few days after the final game.


	10. Overwhelming 2.1

_When seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise: ...With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?_ \- Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

"We have here an atypical flight power," Jon Davis began. Davis was standing at the front of the briefing room. Behind him on the wall was a projected map showing a portion of the American Southwest - California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada. "Intelligence indicates that air friction of the magnitude Slipstream experiences should tear his skin off."

"So what are we looking at?"

The man who asked the question was Dorian Thomas, the Omega team captain. Arguably, Omega had to know the most about the powers of whichever villain they were trying to capture - the nonlethal takedown was Omega's job and specialty, after all.

 _After the messup with Sear's power, though, everyone wants to be pretty damn clear on what the opponent's power is,_ Guzman thought with a feeling of satisfaction. He trusted his men to improvise in a tight spot - it was Alan West's quick thinking with the target selection last time that had saved their hide, after all - but he still appreciated a solid, well-thought plan of attack.

Thomas frowned and elaborated on his question. "I mean, is it a typical Alexandria-type deal?"

Davis nodded in appreciation of the question. "That's the interesting thing - it doesn't seem so." Davis walked over to a computer terminal in the corner of the room and changed the projection on the wall, replacing the map with an image. "This image was taken one month ago, after Slipstream got into some kind of fight with another gangster. Something about distribution territory."

Davis stepped away from the desk and walked over to the projection, reaching up to point at the image. Davis was highlighting one part of the image in particular: Slipstream was wearing what was apparently his trademark light blue outfit. The outfit, however, was visibly shredded on Slipstream's chest, frayed fibers barely holding it together over his sternum. Underneath the frayed fabric, Slipstream was clearly bleeding from a wound near his left shoulder. Burns covered the center of his chest and his right shoulder.

Davis indicated the blood. "Most strength-toughness-flight Parahumans would be bulletproof. This is a bullet wound, sustained in the confrontation, inflicted by one of the unpowered individuals working for Slipstream's opponent. We pulled him in for questioning..."

Davis walked over to the computer again and pulled up a tape of an interrogation.

"You hurt the enemy Parahuman?" The tape was just of the man being interrogated; the voice of the asker came from off-camera.

The man nodded. "Yeah, I shot at him. So what?"

"And the bullet hit?"

Again a nod. "Yeah, he didn't dodge or anything."

A pause and the interviewer asked: "Right, but it did damage? Most Parahumans capable of flight typically have some toughness or invulnerability."

The man shook his head no. "It did damage, sure. Slipstream ain't invulnerable. Maybe when he's up in the air. I mean, people don't waste bullets shooting at something flying that fast, but I guess he could be. But when he's on the ground? Nah. His power isn't thick skin or whatever - it's uh, slipperiness, you know? The name?"

Davis clicked a key and they were back on the image of the cape.

"OPCU intelligence has refined our verdict a little more precisely from 'slipperiness'. More precisely, as part of his flight power, Slipstream reduces the friction the air exerts on his skin. This is why he is able to be injured on the ground: as you can see, his power doesn't make his skin any less vulnerable or penetrable. Rather than protect his body from the air, his power reduces the air's effect on his body."

Guzman injected an inquiry into the silence. "I learned my lesson a little after last time. What are some unexpected uses of this? Don't want to be caught flat-footed again."

"Well...probably works for swimming, too, right?" The question was posed by Jack Lewis, Delta team leader.

Guzman nodded. "Seems reasonable. The air and water are both fluids, so he can probably post a killer lap time in a pool."

Lewis bobbed his head in agreement. "Don't really see how it would help on the ground, though - you'd really just fly rather than try to run a fast lap. And I guess the air friction isn't the limiting factor either - it's the human muscles."

Thomas chimed in again, his deep, slow voice offsetting the other two men's rapid speech. "He could probably slide across the ground with his power active. It works on air, it may cushion him on the ground."

Behind Guzman, James Wilson laughed. "Dude's got a mean slide then; bet he could steal third base real easy."

Guzman shifted in his seat; the briefing had gone on for a bit. "What lets him actually fly?"

Davis considered the answer for a second, attempting to phrase it properly. "To be honest, we're not sure. We think it has to do with momentum control - that he can somehow modify his own momentum. We're not sure to any more precision what the actual mechanic is."

Guzman considered this. _The problem with taking on villains,_ he realized, _is that you don't know exactly what you're up against._ When going into war against an opponent - especially if you were fighting for a country like the United States of America - you tended to have a decent understanding of what forces the enemy marshaled. Satellite surveillance had been in operation for years now and the incredible level of detail the images were able to produce was frankly pretty insane. Even before satellites the country had employed high-altitude surveillance aircraft. (1)

The meeting concluded a short time later. The primary objective was to brief them on what capabilities to expect so they could implement some practice against those fighting styles in their training.

* * *

It had been a few weeks since the raid on Sear and Ironclad, and the team was understandably wary about repeating that experience without more preparation.

Guzman heaved a deep breath. He was standing across a crash pad from James Wilson. The two men were practicing a sort of acrobatics - taking turns launching each other into the air.

"It's sort of like the Allies during World War Two," Guzman said as he hopped up onto the crash pad. The bag was thick, its top and edges rising more than two feet off the ground. He took long strides to cross the pad, the surface ballooning up and down as he stepped, making him bob up and down.

Wilson caught on immediately. "What, the information warfare stuff?"

Guzman nodded. "Yeah. the theatrics to disguise the intent and extent of D-Day."

The meeting from that morning was fresh in both men's minds. After Sear, they both had a desire to know as much as possible about their opponents when preparing to go into an operation. But neither felt like they'd ever fully get a grasp on combating Parahumans - going against an opponent who drew an ability from a grab bag of random magical bullshit.

So they were here, practicing for when there was a problem. The OPCU as an organization spent a lot of its time gathering information and trying to ferret out villains' secrets, but the OSF had relatively little to do. Guzman suspected this would be the tempo of his life for the foreseeable future: weeks of preparation followed by minutes of action.

Michael Williams and Alan West were in a different section of the room, attempting to practice takedowns on each other. Guzman watched the two men for a bit while standing on the pad in front of James. The sparring pattern looked very distinct from what Guzman was used to - it was not two opponents practicing their fighting in general. Rather, the two men were practicing one thing over and over, the repetition making it look like a video of a five-step dance set to loop.

Williams started four paces back from West. When he was two paces out, he shifted his weight to the right, leaning away from West. West turned to face Williams. Michael dropped to the balls of his feet and exploded to his left, extending both legs. West spun but was unable to move quickly enough to dodge Michael's outstretched right foot, which whipped across his shins and sent West's lower body sliding out from under him. He rolled to the right with the motion, coming back onto his feet in a crouch and backing off a pace. The two men were the same distance they had been before, albeit shifted forty-five degrees clockwise. They repeated the maneuver over and over, Williams constantly varying the angle he approached West.

West was practicing what to do when getting hit below his center of gravity. Guzman fully expected that Slipstream would try something like a drop tackle on them, and was making them practice how to recover in the shortest time possible. Given some practice, West's approach was optimal. Rather than stumble and try to regain balance, quickly rolling with the imbalance and coming back up onto his feet was giving him a much shorter recovery time. It would fail miserably if he wasn't well-trained and reacted instinctively on the battlefield, which is why he was practicing it over and over to the point of exhaustion.

Most of these techniques took time to practice, which is why Guzman was insisting they become well-versed. It wouldn't be possible for them to practice lots of villain-specific techniques before any given fight if the tempo of their operations accelerated at all, so they had to take advantage of what downtime they had now - while they had it.

Guzman squared off in front of Wilson. "Okay James," he said. "Let's go again."

Wilson nodded and squatted, cupping his hands in front of his crotch. Guzman placed his bare right foot in James' cupped hand; they had taken their shoes off to be kind to each other. Guzman hopped forward awkwardly, scooting his left foot forwards a few inches. He placed his hands on James' shoulders.

"Three...two...one." With a grunt, James heaved Guzman. His powerful thighs contracted, straightening his body. As his torso accelerated upwards, he contracted his bulky biceps, increasing Guzman's upwards velocity.

As Guzman was hurled upwards he straightened his right leg hard, pushing on Wilson's shoulders with both hands as if pulling himself up out of a swimming pool at the edge.

The end result was that Guzman rocketed up into the air, flying fifteen feet up. His foot continued its upward path even as his torso lost its momentum, causing him to be suspended at the apex of his flight with his feet just higher than his head. He had two options at this point - roll sideways or roll over. Guzman opted for the second option, tightening his core and kicking his feet up, hard.

This was technically the riskier option, but it offered a better potential outcome. The risk posed was all in the kick - if Guzman didn't give himself enough rotational momentum, all he'd manage to do was place his feet above his head. If, however, he kicked hard enough - and looked backwards, over his head, as if trying to see someone behind him, just _like so_ \- then his feet would come over his head and down the other side, spinning back under him as he descended.

Guzman unlocked his knees, landing on the balls of his feet, and immediately expanded his legs as if trying to leap forward, somersaulting across the mat. As he sprung forwards he felt the rest of his momentum get absorbed into the thick pad, and he came up onto his feet, hands raised in front of him.

James nodded. "Nice job. First backflip you've landed."

Guzman grinned. They had been at it for nearly an hour, James tossing Guzman over and over again so he could practice his landings. While Guzman had begun consistently nailing the side rolls for the last twenty minutes or so, he still hadn't managed to get a backflip quite right.

The importance of this task was massive in Guzman's mind. He had to assume, given the variety of physics-violating and super-strength powers out there, that at some point the men would get tossed hard and high. If they were able to land safely it would mean one more man who could keep fighting - and against a Parahuman who might be able to chuck them around like ragdolls, every person would make a difference.

Guzman switched partners with Michael, facing off against Alan. While Guzman and West worked on their Slipstream-specific practice, Michael got to experience the joy of getting tossed over and over by James.

 _It hurt a lot at first,_ Guzman thought. _But honestly, it kinda got fun once I wasn't landing on my tailbone every time._

The men switched off again, Alan taking his turn being launched skyward. When they were finished with that rotation, Guzman realized they had a problem.

"Huh," he said, eyeing James. The man was the heaviest in the group by a wide margin, his muscle bulking out an already-huge frame.

They all stood around in silence for a second, pondering the problem before them, before Guzman had a stroke of insight.

"We're in LA! Hollywood!" He said grinning, knowing the non-sequitur would annoy the men.

James rolled his eyes. "And what does Hollywood have to do with the fact that I outweigh you all?"

Guzman grinned wolfishly. "We're gonna get you a trampoline, James. Not the backyard kind - the kind they use to film stunts."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Word of God is that the Cold War just kind of ended after the appearance of Scion and the first Parahumans. It would have still had roughly thirty years to brew, however, and the development of the SR-71 and surveillance satellites was motivated strongly by that.


	11. Overwhelming 2.2

_When seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise: ...With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?_ \- Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

James jumped higher and higher, the springs creaking a little more with each landing, extending as the cloth surface depressed. When his jumps were nearing the ceiling, James allowed himself to rotate onto his back as he ascended.

James kicked his left foot up - but his right foot didn't follow suit, and he was left flailing, trying to regain stability in midair as he came crashing back down onto the surface of the trampoline. His bounce was much shorter this time, and his limbs were still in a tangle - meaning he landed awkwardly, again, and had to wait until his bounce was stopped before he could straighten all of his body parts out.

Michael snickered at him, but Alan was looking on observantly. "You know," he said, "it's funny how small your bounce is if you're not actively working on going higher and higher. It's kinda like swings on a playground - unless you're pushing every swing, you stop pretty fast."

Guzman nodded at this, both of the men watching James right himself. "Yeah, I would've never assumed the physics for springs and pendulums had anything in common." The men's first physics class had been interesting, to say the least. Davis' superiors gave the OSF carte blanche - to an extent, though they had never discovered what that might be - and so it had been trivial for Davis to get authorization to hire a physics tutor. The tutor was an LACCD professor who had jumped at the chance to make some more money on the side.

The first lesson, while fascinating, had ultimately been somewhat mediocre, Guzman had to admit. The tutor had come in, prepared to lecture in typical collegiate fashion, throwing up practice problems on the board. After the lesson was over, Guzman had approached the man and talked with him for a while.

The gist of the conversation was thus: the men of OSF were going up against strange threats that normal soldiers were used to meeting in combat. In combat, they relied on physical fitness and instincts, both trained from hours of grueling physical and mental conditioning. Much of this conditioning needed to be performed daily so that the men could be in the best possible mental and physical state to survive on any given day against any threat. The OSF had so far fought two Parahumans in one encounter. Their training was what had carried them through unforeseen circumstances.

"But what if we're called to a combat we haven't had any time to prepare for at all," Guzman had asked the man. There were PRT agents and Protectorate heroes(1) who would be called to deal with a rampaging Parahuman villain - but if they were otherwise engaged, or if the OPCU gained intel that their window for moving on a villain was immediate...

The teacher had shook his head, shrugging. "I don't know. You hope your training is enough."

"Yes, we hope so," Guzman agreed. "And the amount of time we spend daily training makes us optimistic. But we could be fighting an unknown." Guzman had gone on to explain that the men spent hours training every day because it was insurance against their lives. "And we are giving up that training, right now, to sit in these physics lessons, even for me to have this discussion with you."

The tutor became visibly uncomfortable, swallowing. "You think my lesson is a waste of time?"

Guzman shook his head. "No. I think your lessons are good, exactly what your job demands. Today we spent time learning how to vectorize forces and motions, to draw diagrams, to consider all forces, and the beginning of the relationships between forces and motion. These are all valuable things to anyone wanting a physics education, wanting to solve physical problems. But they are not valuable to me, Professor."

The man shook his head, visibly confused. "I don't understand, then."

Guzman considered it for a second. "You are teaching us how to find answers to physics problems. I can't even begin to quantify the givens. You are teaching a student how to compute the impact energy of a bullet, or its puncture depth, based on its mass and velocity, or its time spent coming to a stop in the target. But I can't tell you the time it spends coming to a stop in a target. I can't tell you how much air friction has played a role in its deceleration as it travels."

The professor nodded, beginning to understand. "And even if you could, you could not spend time calculating the answer on the battlefield."

Guzman smiled. "Exactly."

"What do you find most valuable, then? What do you want to get out of this? What..." he trailed off for a second. "What is your objective? To have knowledge that may help you intuit how a Parahuman's power works while combating them? So that you might disable it?"

It was Guzman who shook his head this time. "I think that information is valuable, don't get me wrong. I think maybe, ultimately, knowing how a Parahuman's power interfaces with physics - and where it completely throws them aside - is greatly valuable to the OPCU, especially when working on containment measures. But it doesn't matter to me when they're lobbing balls of molten metal at me, and I'm shooting bullets that evaporate at them."

The physics teacher agreed. "Right, okay. In computer programming, we sometimes don't know how a program written by somebody else works. So you treat is as a black box - you just look at the outputs, and don't bother yourself with how the internals are implemented. If it always generates numbers, then I can make decisions based on that fact - I don't need to really care how it chooses those numbers."

Guzman nodded. "I think in this case, we care a little bit more about how the numbers are generated, because they may let the bad guys do something problematic, like evaporate bullets. That was the problem we ran into with Sear -" The professor's eyebrow quirked up, "- the Parahuman who could heat metal. We didn't know the field of his power's reach extended to a little bit around his skin, and that effectively made him bulletproof. No rounds could touch him, but it was only the sniper rounds that could even exert measurable force on him. I figured that was partially because of their mass, but after today, I see it had a lot more to do with their velocity."

The professor smiled as Guzman said this.

Guzman continued. "So I don't think a total black-box approach is what we're looking for, but I can see how it would be important against a Parahuman whose powers we know nothing about. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that type of reasoning in your next session?"

The professor shrugged, making a note. "Sure. I mean, a computer programmer - or even better, a statistician - might be better suited to deliver that kind of lesson, but I'm happy to discuss it to the extent I can."

Guzman resumed the thread of conversation. "But what we really need, Professor, is an intuitive understanding. Parahumans pose a danger to us partially because we may not know the full extent of their powers but also because _they have powers_. When a guy is launching molten metal at me, I need to understand why that's dangerous. The heat, obviously - but how does the heat compare to things I'm used to? How can I make intuitive guesses about the order of magnitude of danger I'm in? If molten metal hits me, how does its heat compare to burning myself on the wall of the oven when pulling out a roast? If a Parahuman's power is to move really fast, what will them hitting me do? Will it knock me over, or will it break bones at the point of impact because the force is so significant it snaps my bones before my skeleton can distribute the impact?"

The professor nodded. "Like your physical training, you need your brain to understand what forces -" he laughed a little, at the accidental pun. "- are at work, so that you _know_ what to do about them. So you can reason about strategies and the correct course of action."

They had come full circle. "Each hour of my training exists to prepare me, so that when the battlefield is hectic and decisions need to be made in moments, my brain and my body fall back on what they know. We are giving up an hour of that time each week, Professor, for these lessons. So I need these lessons to meet two criteria. First, I need them to be at least as valuable as the hour I would spend otherwise training. Second, I need them to fill the same role. I need them to help me _understand_ , so that when I get on the battlefield, I have this type of knowledge as intuition under my belt. I want this classroom time to generate the same habits and impulses as time spent drilling tactics with my squad."

They were scheduled for one hour of lessons a week, on Monday afternoons. It was Wednesday morning. Guzman was eager to see what next Monday's class would bring. Part of the reason they had gotten a community college teacher to come and deliver the tutoring sessions was a question of time and dedication. Jon Davis had attended both community college and university, and firmly believed that university professors were - in general - more concerned with their research and publications, while community college teachers were more interested in the quality of education their students received. They simply weren't being paid enough to take the position for any reason other than passion. Guzman was confident he would take the week between lessons to improve for next week, and had said as much to Davis.

In front of Guzman and West, James Wilson was still flailing around on the trampoline.

"You good?" Alan asked Guzman, grinning. Guzman grunted; he was known for zoning out to think in the middle of conversations and battles. One, he suspected, was more problematic than the other.

"Oi! You three!"

Guzman spun on his heels. Michael Williams was at the doorway, gesturing them over. "Omega has some new toy they want us to see!"

"C'mon, Wilson," Guzman shouted without turning around. "Not like you're getting anything out of this anyway."

He heard a muffled curse behind him.

* * *

"What's this stuff?" Jack Lewis asked, gesturing his hand.

"Yeah, Thomas" Guzman agreed. "What _is_ this stuff?"

An OPCU technician in the corner spoke up. "It's an aerosolized molecular bonding compound that can be used as a substrate for other reactions."

"So...it's glue that can do other stuff," Dorian Thomas replied.

"That you spray," the technician said.

Wilson grinned at the OSF Omega leader. "What stuff?"

"Well..." Dorian Thomas replied. "That's kinda why we've brought you all here," he said while gesturing around at the men. "Basically, we're pretty sure we can get this stuff to stick to our Parahuman opponents, regardless of their power...for the most part. So if you could, uh, debuff your opponents with an effect of your choosing, what would those effects be? We can customize them per Parahuman opponent."

"So Slipstream works by reducing friction, right?" Wilson asked the assembled men.

Davis nodded.

Wilson thought about it for a second. "Let's stick something really unwieldy and" he paused for a second, considering the words to use. Realizing that he couldn't figure out any, he forged ahead: "friction-inducing? on it."

Guzman grinned. "Right, let's start countering powers."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Alexandria did not move to head the LA protectorate until after Hero's death (9/15/2000) (https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3koqyc/what_protectorate_team_are_eidolon_and_hero_a/cuz8v53/ ). Alexandria, Hero, Eidolon, and Legend were sworn in on 1/18/1993, shortly after the 12/13/1992 appearance of Behemoth. Leviathan first appeared in Oslo on 6/9/1996. These details date this story sometime in 1993-1996.


	12. Overwhelming 2.3

_When seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise: ...With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?_ \- Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

Jack Lewis, leader of OSF Delta, shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Alpha ready." _Guzman,_ he thought.

"Omega ready." _Dorian Thomas._

"Three. Two. One..."

Lewis took a deep breath, and the world exploded around him.

"...Breach."

The sun's rays lanced in through the doorway, highlighting the silhouettes of Guzman and his men as they moved forward. Lewis watched Guzman. He passed over the threshold, rotating his hips to bring his upper body to the left. The green laser beam emitting from under the barrel of his MP5K was visible in the dust from the imploded front door of the building, the beam glittering off the motes of dust in the air. Lewis gulped as the beam tracked across the room, passing a foot above his head before coming to a stop on the head of his captor, behind him and to his right.

Lewis' best bet in this moment was to stay perfectly still. He wanted to flinch but forced himself to stay completely rigid. His nerves were humming and he could feel his neck tendons jumping out, his core and arms clenched.

Behind Guzman, James Wilson crossed the threshold. His body rotated right, facing away from Lewis' position. Seeing no hostiles in the room in his direction, Wilson quickly moved towards the doorway in front of him, covering it with a sweep of his weapon.

Guzman depressed the trigger on his submachine gun once, his gloved finger confidently squeezing. The silencer on his weapon let out a hiss as the gas escaped it three times; not that Lewis heard the second or third - the sound of escaping gas was always overshadowed by the noise of the gun. Even with silencers, a gun firing fifteen feet in front of you in an enclosed space was still _loud_. Guzman's weapon fired and loaded three bullets, taking less than a fifth of a second.

Lewis heard the sound of his captor's head flying apart behind him. The second or third round buried itself in the plywood wall behind him and Lewis felt wood splinters raining down around him; he was glad he was wearing his helmet and ballistic vest.

James Wilson advanced into the next room as Michael Williams entered the building. Michael speared forwards, heading to the back entrance to the room.

Alan West was last to enter, following hot on the heels of the previous three men. Guzman moved quickly past where Jack was sitting, not even sparing him a glance.

 _Least he could do, after sending three bullets a few feet from my head,_ Jack thought. It did strike him as humorous that his sarcasm was still functioning in the sea of adrenaline he was drowning in.

The smell of ozone and fresh-cut wood and burned wood filled Jack's lungs as he inhaled.

In seconds it was over. There was the sound of callouts as Alpha members met Omega members somewhere in one of the rooms out of Jack's sight; he heard more gunshots as the men entered each room. From all over the house, a chorus of "clear!" calls.

Jack heard the sound of Davis' voice in his ear. "Weapons safe, everyone. Stand down."

Around him, the sound of eight clicks as all eight men toggled the fire mode selectors on their guns to highlight the white 'S' symbol.

Jack Lewis stood and exhaled. "Holy shit," he said.

"You okay, Jack?"

Jack spun around. Guzman was walking up to him, a concerned look in his eye.

"Yeah, man. That was terrifying though," Lewis replied. He walked over to the wooden cutout of a hostile, his 'captor'. He bent down and lifted it up. There were two large holes above the neck. The second bullet had knocked off the top part of the head, and the third bullet had likely passed through that space. The first two shots - the only two which Lewis had visible evidence of - were within an inch of each other.

"Nice shots," Lewis grunted in appreciation.

Guzman nodded; what better way to lower his pounding heartrate than talk about something mundane? "Yeah, I'm a big fan of this holographic sight. Been using it ever since I joined OSF; I didn't think nearly as much about this stuff when I wasn't burning through a bunch of mags every morning."

Lewis agreed heartily with the statement, enough that he managed a grin. He could hear his pulse pounding in his ears and forced himself to take a few deep breaths.

"Good work, everyone." Both men turned to look at Jon Davis as he stepped into the room; he had been in a different room of the plywood building OSF had constructed for the live-fire practice.

"Take five minutes and then meet me in the ramada for debrief."

Guzman walked outside and wandered over to the shade of the nearby ramada, shielding his eyes as he walked. The freshly-painted roof of the ramada was reflecting sunlight right into his eyes, so he was grateful to get into its shade, where the temperature dropped noticeably as well.

Guzman blinked a few times and opened his eyes wide, forcing his pupils to dilate. After the darkness of the plywood demo building, the expanse of dirt and concrete was offensively bright.

Dorian Thomas walked up next to him. "Gotta be honest, running around in the three-digit heat wasn't my first choice."

Guzman laughed. "Shit, really? One hundred? Thought it wasn't supposed to be that bad for a few more weeks."

Thomas nodded as he ejected the magazine from his MP5. "Yeah, out here anyway. Might be a bit cooler over on the coast."

Guzman grunted as he unchambered the round currently in his barrel. He pushed the bullet back into the magazine before placing the magazine in a box for the team's partially expended ammunition; they would repack the bullets back at the OPCU offices.

Though Guzman was really coming to think of OPCU Chaparral as _their_ base. It made sense to have their main office in downtown Los Angeles: closer to a lot of the Parahumans they were trying to capture, a more central location for the various civilian employees and contractors the OPCU employed, and proximity to the FBI Los Angeles main office and the ATF Los Angeles Field Division office. But as a US Marine, he felt the company of kindred spirits out here at Chaparral, where the OPCU was run less like a bureaucracy and more like a military. The OPCU employees might call downtown LA HQ home, but the OSF members called Chaparral home.

Guzman finished storing his weapon and wandered over to a cooler, grabbing a water bottle from inside and shaking the condensation off. Alan West walked up a few seconds later, having stripped off his armor.

"It's too hot for that, man," he smiled while gesturing at Guzman's vest.

"I know," Guzman groused. "But I got range time after the debrief, and I don't really want to take it off just to put it back on... _wet_."

West nodded, using one hand to chug the water out of the bottle while wiping the other sleeve across his brow to collect the sweat beaded there.

"You're not doing your MP5 today?"

"Nah," Guzman said. "I'm gonna get some sidearm practice. Already put it away." He gestured over towards his weapon case before patting the pistol holstered at his hip. "Besides, most of my range time this far has been with the MP5. I haven't really figured out what pistol I want. On the one hand, something that uses the 9-by-19 would be nice, because then I've only got one round I need to carry."

West grinned. "But on the other, you want something with a lot of stopping power. Please, please, _please_ tell me you're not going to say something ridiculous like a Deagle."

"Hey, come on! It's good enough for Mossad!" Guzman exclaimed defensively, his voice rising in pitch.

West eyed him for a second.

"Okay, fine. Not a Deagle. I do think it's a gun for BAMFs, though."

West laughed heartily. "Well, you ask Jack Lewis whether he thinks you qualify as badass. If he says no, ask if he wants to repeat the live-fire exercise again."

Guzman chuckled. "It's a fair point."

West's face grew a little more serious. "I mean it, though, man. The Deagle is ridiculous."

"...and that's why we'll never use it for anything other than target practice," Guzman finished.

West nodded. "Hey, lemme know when you settle on something, though? Most of my range time has been on the SWS and the rest on the MP5, so I'd like to get in a little time on a sidearm."

Guzman nodded, and both men fell silent as the debrief began.

* * *

Guzman was coming to love Fridays because they always meant time spent out at Chaparral. The men would meet at the OPCU office shortly after six and hop into the OSF vans, their gear already packed and loaded the night before. By eight they were geared up and ready for pack runs in the dirt of the Mojave.

_Well, okay. The pack runs suck, Guzman reflected. But they don't suck as much as Monday-morning LA traffic._

Guzman drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. _At least I'll get to do PT and range practice in the AC._

And today was the second physics session with the LACCD professor. Guzman was eager to see what he had come up with following their discussion: that could always be interesting...

* * *

"In order to help you develop an intuition for what kinds of energies and forces you'll be facing out there, I want to give you a feeling for how various quantities are calculated - but not with numbers - with relationships."

The physics professor stepped up to the whiteboard they had in the briefing room and drew an equation on it: "KE = m v v"

"Did you realize that the kinetic energy an object has - say, a bullet fired out of one of your guns - is the product of its mass and its velocity _squared_ ? Look, there are two velocities in there. So if you can choose between doubling a bullet's velocity, or doubling its mass, you'd want the extra velocity: that will increase the energy of the bullet by a factor of _four_."

The professor took a breath, turning back to face the men again. "Captain Guzman tells me that you guys recently faced off against a, uh, metallo-kinetic? And a guy who could heat metal?"

Michael Williams, sitting in the front row, nodded.

"Anybody have any idea how heat and motion compare in terms of energy?"

Nobody spoke up.

He pulled a candy bar out of his pocket and held it up as if to throw it. James Wilson raised his hands as if getting ready to catch a football, and the teacher lobbed it underhand to James.

"Wilson. Pretty typical chocolate bar, right?"

"Looks like it. I can't quite tell because it's German, I think. Could be Swiss too, then, I guess."

The teacher nodded. "How many calories in the bar?"

James flipped it over.

"Huh, weird."

"What's that, James?"

"Well, it says 'Energie'...which is 'energy', I'm assuming. But then it says there are 530 _k_ cal. Or 2225 'kJ'," he said, pronouncing the letters separately.

The teacher smiled. "American companies are deceptive about how much energy is in your food. When they say there are one hundred calories, they actually mean one hundred kilocalories, or -"

"- One hundred-thousand calories," James finished.

"Indeed. And a calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celsius at sea level. So with 100 calories, you could raise that one gram from a freeze to a boil. Or, with one hundred-thousand - what's in that bar, right there - you could boil one kilogram of ice. Well, mostly. There's some energy involved in the state shift from solid to liquid to gas."

James nodded. "So when Sear was melting and then boiling metal -"

The professor nodded, solemnly. "A _lot_ of candy bars' worth of energy, assuming you can convert the stored chemical energy there into thermal energy efficiently."

"Can you?" James asked. "I mean, as a human, can you convert food energy efficiently into motion?"

"No, not at all. You lose a _ton_ of it to heating the atmosphere. I got that candy bar from Germany - was just there for a few weeks - ate so much bratwurst. It was unbelievably excellent. And I love me some carne asada. But humans in general should eat way more veggies and less meat than Americans do - think about the fact that you're heating the atmosphere with that energy when the corn gets eaten by a cow, so every intermediary step loses a ton of energy. But I digress - that's not the most interesting part, in my opinion. Tell me what you think in a second."

He took a breath before continuing. "One Newton is the amount of energy, or work, required to accelerate a one-kilogram object a certain rate over a meter. There are about four joules in a calorie, which is equivalent to?"

"One one hundred-thousandth of that candy bar?"

The professor nodded. "Now do you have a feel for how to relate the quantities a little?"

Guzman chimed in. "Yeah, I think so. So if I have that candy bar, I can push a one-kilogram object _really_ far ignoring friction - "

"Say it's a smooth sphere on a tile floor," the professor advised.

"Sure, right. Or I can boil one kilogram of water. Or I can eat it and get fat."

"And I strongly advise the third one," the professor said with a grin.

Everyone laughed.

"There are lots of ways to relate other fields of physics together: electromagnetism, nuclear physics, relativity, mechanics, stuff like that. Is there anything in particular you guys want to talk about today? In general, I want to try to give you more intuitions for relationships between stuff I guess that you might face and various orders of magnitude. I'd like to talk about physics at work with bullets - ballistics - and in a fight. But maybe you have some specific questions right now?"

"Actually, yeah."

The heads of the OSF members in the room turned to look at Dorian Thomas, the captain of OSF Omega.

"Can you talk about projectiles? Like cannon or mortar shells? Their motion and stuff? We've got a flier -" he paused to glance at Jon Davis, checking to see if he was allowed to reveal this information. "-that we want to take down. We're not sure how they fly, but their powers manifest as an ability to reduce friction between themselves and the air, or ground, or whatever they're touching."

"So why the ballistics request?"

"Well, we bought some advanced chemical compound from some lab out in Arizona. It can be sprayed in the air, it's real sticky, and we can tailor it to do things. We want to try to stick the Parahuman with some of it, reduce the effectiveness of their powers."

The professor thought about it for a second.

"Well, you could really spread that out in the air if you fired it like a firework." He turned around and started drawing diagrams of arcs on the board. Assuming no explosive force, when an object has momentum and breaks apart - like a rocket or firework that breaks apart in midair - the component pieces maintain the same collective center of gravity. So if it's a rocket that breaks into two pieces, and it was traveling this arc before, then the center point still does - and each half splits evenly, like this."

He outlined more arcs on the board.

"Now, if your _goal_ is to disperse this chemical as much as possible in the air..."


	13. Overwhelming 2.4

_When seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise: ...With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?_ \- Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

Jack Lewis and the other three members of OSF Delta were on a stakeout. None of them had any particular qualifications in the area.

"So in buddy cop movies, there's always one of them who's eating tons of weird and/or gross food during stakeouts," Mario said.

"Oh yeah, Faceplant? And I suppose you volunteer?" Jack said back over their comm system.

Mario Russo, Delta Two, smiled. "I mean, it's boring as shit here. Slipstream has been inside the stash house for, like forty minutes. What's the chance he leaves in the next three minutes? There was a _carniceria_ back on Arroyo, and it smelled fucking delicious."

"Oh, would you quit talking about food, Faceplant?"

_Even after years of living on the West Coast, he still had a touch of the Boston Irish accent._

"Sure, Patrick. If you stop calling me Faceplant, sure."

"Not after that glorious kiss with the concrete. Forget it, Two. It's your tag, now."

"Fuck you too, Robert."

Having been thoroughly reassured by all three Delta companions that his unfortunate nickname would not be forgotten, Mario shook his head and turned his attention back to the stash house.

A curtain next to the front door twitched.

"Hold on, I got motion by the front door. A window. Somebody checking the street outside."

Mario wasn't worried that he'd been seen. He was perched on top of a warehouse a block over, watching the house through high-powered optics. He wouldn't be able to give chase quickly, but that's what he had Patrick for.

The front door opened. "Three. They're about to come out. You ready to pursue?"

"Indeed," the lilt of Patrick's voice slightly muffled by static on the comms.

"Alright. I got two hispanic males helping Slipstream load a suitcase into the trunk of the car."

"Alright, Three. When Two gives the mark, I want you to trail Slipstream's car. Once Three is on the tail, Two, I need you to get mobile again."

Slipstream got in the car, started it, and began to drive off. "Mark," Mario said into his comms.

None of them had any stakeout experience, but Mario did have _plenty_ of experience being a spotter for snipers.

 _And all of Delta has lots of experience driving,_ Mario thought as he watched Patrick's motorcycle adopt a position in traffic a few cars behind Slipstream's position.

"Three is on the tail. I'm gonna hit the I-10 eastbound," Mario reported.

"Roger that, two," Lewis said. "Good winds."

Back at the OPCU LA Headquarters, Jon Davis was listening. He had plenty of paperwork to do, of course, but an operation was ongoing. While nobody was going to get shot at in this op, OSF members _were_ deployed - so he was in the CIC, listening in on the comms.

According to the schedule OSF Delta had put together for Slipstream, the OPCU analysts were reasonably sure he was eventually headed West out of Los Angeles towards San Bernardino, Palm Springs and eventually out of the state. He'd cross the California-Arizona border somewhere South of Lake Havasu City, and that was the farthest east they had managed to track him.

Presumably he was headed into Phoenix: the largest urban area between Los Angeles' sprawl and the various large cities in Texas. Probably he flew as far north as Lake Havasu to avoid detection on entering Phoenix.

But this was as far as they had managed to trace the drugs coming over the border. Ironically, they were going about this all backwards. Typically, FBI or DEA would snag some street-level dealer and threaten them, getting them to turn over their contact network. They would pursue other nodes on the graph, trying to suss out more nodes and edges, gradually assembling a graph and trying to determine how drugs flowed across it.

It was pretty simple in the respect that edges with smaller flow were always further away from the source. The source, in this case, was cartels south of the border. So all they had to do was figure out the name of a network node, stake them out, and record roughly how much illegal shit they touched. The more it was, the closer to the source. Edges with smaller flow were _always_ further away from the source.

For the first ten years of its existence, the DEA had been working with US Border Patrol, trying to trace the movement of drugs across the border. But cartels had gotten crafty and had started digging tunnels or even just _catapulting_ bricks of cocaine over the border.

So for the next ten years, the DEA had taken the network approach. Flipping small fish to get a slightly bigger fish, following the trail uphill to trace the flow from the streets back towards the distributors north of the border.

And in the last few years, that had all become unnecessary. Slipstream was part of the reason why.

With Parahumans lending their services, it was trivially easy for cartels to move product over the border. Slipstream just shoved bricks of coke into his costume and _flew_ with them. Some Parahuman had been caught temporarily shape shifting an entire pallet of marijuana into a vintage-looking guitar.

 _Midas: he had been a lucky nab,_ he thought. Border Patrol agents had sensed something suspicious with the man trying to cross the border: why was he trying to enter the country at 3am and looking so anxious about it, instead of dead tired like _everyone else in the building?_ They had pulled him into an interview room, and while the border agent went to grab a cup of coffee for the both of them before starting his questions, whatever magic Midas had applied to the marijuana had worn off.

And just like that, Midas' "guitar", left in the luggage check, had transformed into an entire pallet of marijuana loaves, shrink-wrapped and vacuum-sealed. Right in front of a USBP agent's eyes. He had gone over and poked a loaf a few times in disbelief, apparently, before coming to his senses and raising an alarm.

Security footage had confirmed that it was indeed the man in the interview room whose guitar had morphed into hundreds of pounds of illegal drugs, and his face had confirmed it too - when they told him there was a problem with his guitar, his expression had been that of the well-and-truly damned.

 _And it's just getting crazier,_ Davis thought. Apparently there were some Parahumans on the east coast now who could access pocket space. _Like some fucking_ Bag of Holding _,_ Davis thought.

As a result of Parahumans, various pathways through the border were opening up in front of the cartels.

Which ironically had flipped how the government was tracking the flow of drugs all over again. _The DEA might still be working with their network graphs, labelling actors and trying to figure out who is supplying who._ But the OPCU was tracking the Parahumans who were bringing drugs over the border.

They had noticed a few so far - but they hadn't attempted to bring in any of them. They instead tracked where these people took the drugs. In the more traditional style, they were eliminating Parahumans from the network from the street level up.

Sear and Ironclad had been responsible for guarding distribution to Los Angeles and most of Southern California in general. Once the OPCU had taken those two out, the FBI had raided their safehouse, recovering most of a month's supply of drugs and plenty of weapons. The FBI had inserted a mole into that part of the distribution network, pretending to be a close contact of Sear and Ironclad.

Before Parahumans were major players in the organized crime distribution networks, the networks had functioned as cells, building webs of trust. If you were selling you had someone you bought from and lots of people you sold to. Because the activity was covert, you could only trust your immediate contacts - and if they introduced you to anyone, they entered your trust. In this way, those you trusted vouched for those _they_ trusted, and your web expanded.

But now that Parahumans were a factor, Rule of Law had been supplanted by Rule of Force. Might Makes Right. If you were a distributor in SoCal, it didn't matter what level you were or who you knew and trusted - you knew Sear and Ironclad were your bosses, or your boss's bosses. No matter where you sat on the chain of command, they were always above you. And they had the perfect way to authenticate themselves: if Ironclad showed up and told you to do something and you refused, he'd just start fucking with your guns and knives. Powers were unique and served as perfect means of authentication.

So when the OPCU took down Sear and Ironclad, there was a vacuum in the chain of command. They could wait for someone else to step up from below, wresting control over the local distribution, or they could wait for someone higher up the chain of command to send an aide, forcibly filling the space left by the captured Parahumans. Or, they could insert a mole into the chain of command. If the mole knew everything Sear and Ironclad did - something they had worked very hard to accomplish, using all the information the OPCU had gleaned from the captured Parahumans - then they had some supporting evidence for the statement that they were a direct assistant to the two Parahumans. And if that same mole had access to lots of drugs and weapons and kept supplying everyone the Parahumans had been, then nobody really cared.

And thus the FBI had inserted a mole into the cartel's network north of the border who now ran all of the Southern California drug distribution.

 _Coyote,_ they called him. Davis laughed. The name had many layers of meaning. In border states, the term coyote was used to refer to men who smuggled illegal immigrants across the border. That was the association any distributors meeting him would make.

Additionally, the word "coyote" was itself a Spanish corruption of the Aztec name for the animal. While the drugs were coming over the northern Mexican border, the US government suspected that the Mexican drug cartel presence was drawing resources from further south. Where Mexico grew the narrowest, Oaxaca facing onto the Pacific and Veracruz facing the Gulf of Mexico, South American organized crime had established a major presence. They were funneling resources northwards to associates established in the jungles surrounding the location of the former Aztec empire, and, the US government believed, ultimately to the cartels that moved drugs over the border for distribution stateside.

So 'Coyote' played on both of these facts, referencing the human smugglers and the ashes of the Aztec empire which now housed the rising empires of South and Central America. But in Native American, _Coyote_ was the Trickster. Like the Greek Prometheus, he had stolen fire from the gods and given it to the men. Coyote had stolen the Parahumans' network and returned it to control of the regular humans - in this case, the humans at the FBI.

In replacing the Parahumans with Coyote, the FBI had effectively plunged the Southern California distribution network back into the web-of-trust model. Random dealers were no longer able to rely on their ability to authenticate orders as being from Sear or Ironclad by simply asking them to use their powers. The dealers were now forced to take orders from their bosses, who took orders from their bosses, et cetera. And at the top of that chain was Coyote. The Trickster, convincing the bad guys that he was on their side, an integral link in their chain of command.

Most of the Parahumans in the organization were responsible for bringing drugs over the border. They would hand the drugs off to anonymous contacts, who would bring them to one of the distribution heads. All of the distribution heads either employed Parahumans for security or were themselves Parahumans. Sear and Ironclad were both distribution heads who had worked together, but each managed a distribution network: Sear managed the Southern California network while Ironclad managed the Los Angeles networks. Meanwhile, Slipstream was responsible for managing a network somewhere east - probably Arizona. When they discovered where he took his drugs, they would replace him too.

There would be another Coyote to take over in Slipstream's absence, and once the FBI had replaced enough of the cartel's network, they would work their way up the food chain. While the OPCU had autonomy in its operations, it ultimately accomplished objectives set by the FBI and the ATF. When the FBI discovered Parahumans in the food chain, they would point the OPCU at the Parahumans - _Like a gun_ \- and pull the trigger. The OPCU would take out the Parahumans running distribution over the border, and the FBI would replace them, too. Once enough of the network was under the FBI's control, the plan was simple: shut it all down and go ghost.

The FBI's plan was to grow inside the distribution network, like a cancer. And once they had infiltrated enough of it...well, a head couldn't realize any of its dreams without a body to enact its directions. Without any access to its distribution network north of the border, the cartels would have nobody to sell product, and thus no way to convert their assets to liquid capital. Without their Parahuman drug smugglers, they wouldn't even be able to move goods into the country.

They would have to begin the arduous process of rebuilding their network from scratch. It would take years, and the FBI and ATF would monitor and infiltrate the process every step of the way.

Jon Davis started at the map on the screen in front of him, then turned around. At the back of the CIC was an orgchart the OPCU had constructed with Parahuman villains' photos - where possible. At the top? An unknown silhouette, the person who was in charge of ferrying drugs over the border. Off to the side, a number of silhouettes - Parahumans who were responsible for actually moving product. One of those had been replaced with the face of Midas, freshly captured by the Border Patrol and now awaiting trial at Chaparral. Below the top silhouette were many more: Sear, Ironclad, Slipstream, all photos. Next to them, many more unknown Parahumans.

The board was here to remind everyone in the CIC how much progress had been made on their overall goal. Very little. Three Parahumans captured - two on purpose by the OPCU, and one by the USBP by total accident. Many more still to go, Slipstream the next among them.

"Alright," Davis said into comms. "Delta Three, update on position?"

"We're on the one-ten headed north. Just passed Disney concert hall. Wait a minute..."

Patrick's voice cut out for a minute and over the comms, Davis heard the roar as his motorcycle accelerated, the sound coming over the comm system as he imagined Patrick leaning lower over the bike.

"He's just switched lanes. We're merging onto the 101 headed northwest towards Hollywood."

Davis nodded. All according to plan, so far. Every Monday afternoon, Slipstream flew into California, looping north of the San Gabriel Mountains low and fast, barely skating above treetops. He landed at an abandoned mechanic's shop in north Burbank, where he had a car stashed - the sedan he was now, in fact, driving. He would drive down the highway, staying in the right lane and driving three miles an hour over the speed limit, until he got to his destination a few miles east of LAX: the house Mario had just been watching. He would go inside for a while then head back up to the mechanic's shop, where he would don his costume and ditch his car. He would stuff the week's supply of cocaine into his costume - the men hadn't seen this part - and then take off and return the way he came, looping north of the San Gabriels before heading east.

Delta Three, Patrick Finley, was currently tailing him.

Delta One - the team leader, Jack Lewis - was stashed in a sniper's blind on top of the mechanic's shop.

Delta Four, Robert Francis, was in a car parked across the road from the mechanic's.

And Delta Two, Mario Russo, was now eastbound on the I-10 after watching Slipstream exit the stash house.

Three would ensure they kept eyes on Slipstream. His job was just to tail and to peel off when Slipstream was in visual range of One and Four.

Two would help them vectorize Slipstream's flight towards the border. His job was to get as far east on I-10 as possible - he had about ninety minutes. That's how long it would take Slipstream to change and pack his drugs in his costume.

From Los Angeles to Palm Springs was a three-hour drive with bad traffic. With light traffic - _Like now. One P.M. on a Monday. He'll be out of the worst parts of the city before rush hour traffic even gets close to started,_ Davis thought - it was still a two-hour drive.

Russo - Two - wasn't quite going that far. There was an air reserve base about two-thirds of the way to Palm Springs, but it was further south of the San Gabriel Mountains. Two's job was just to get east of that, if he could, to help get a more precise vector on Slipstream as he finished passing north of the mountains and the San Bernardino National Forest.

 _If he can't, though, it's okay,_ Davis reminded himself. The result of OSF Delta's intel was that the OPCU had pieced together Slipstream's entire Monday schedule, and they could act on that information next week, or the week after that, or the week after _that_...

The OPCU was renting some expensive toys from some Hollywood studios, as well as from the United States Marine Corps. They had arrayed multiple cameras - both traditional film and some of the newer, fancier digital cinematography cameras - around the garage. When Slipstream walked out of the garage and lifted off, they would be capturing his takeoff from every angle, at various frame rates, in both sections of the spectrum visible and invisible to the naked eye.

The OPCU had assembled a good idea of when their target moved. And now they were going to know where and how.

"We're finally going to figure out where you're going," Davis muttered to himself. "And how you fly."


	14. Overwhelming 2.5

_When seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise: ...With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?_ \- Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

Jack was in the passenger's seat of the sedan. His seat was leaned back while Robert's seat was upright. Robert had to watch for Slipstream's arrival. _The benefits of leadership._

"It'll be hard to bring in this guy nonlethally," Robert said.

Jack nodded. "Yeah, it doesn't always seem like the easiest thing to do. Sniper bullet to the brain seems much more straightforward, in my opinion."

"I mean, that's still an option, Lewis. It's the contingency, though. Nonlethal if possible."

Jack laughed. "Right, West's gun certainly looks pretty lethal. Honestly, so do the MP5s. Really, you'd be confused looking at Alpha; their entire setup looks like it's designed for lethality."

"Isn't that kind of the point, though? When we ran the Sear-Ironclad op, the goal was for Alpha to look lethal. To scare Sear into running towards Omega."

"I mean sure, that was the goal. But come on, Francis - you know that they were kind of up the creek when they tried nonlethal options."

"Yeah, fine," Robert replied. "Everyone will have nonlethal takedown options when it comes to future ops, though - we just couldn't risk getting the metal of the epi-pens close to the two Parahumans. At Alpha's range, anyways."

"Right," Jack said slowly. "I guess I'm failing to see what's got you concerned."

"Like I said - I think it will be harder to bring in Slipstream nonlethally. A flier. And they're only going to get harder from here on out. Imagine when we come against an Alexandria-type flier. Or..." he thought for a second. "One of the Parahumans who can go invisible? One who can mind-control? Heartbreaker?"(1)

"Good news is, Heartbreaker isn't into organized crime..." Jack muttered.

Robert stared at him, mouth agape, for a moment.

"Not that he's not a grade-A level douche I'd love to take down," Jack quickly amended. "I just mean, well, you know that our mission - the _Organized Parahuman Crime Unit_ 's mission - is to take down targets painted by the FBI and ATF. And those targets are, unequivocally, Parahumans involved in organized crime. Heartbreaker isn't."

"I'm not necessarily convinced about that," Robert replied. "The FBI would have no trouble convincing anyone that he's part of an organized human trafficking group. Even if the group is really just himself and any...you know, complicit associates. Maybe not everyone working with him is mastered."

"Yeah, I'm not saying that the FBI _couldn't_. Just that I don't think they will. The whole reason the idea for the OPCU was drummed up was that they were losing the organized crime war, backsliding on progress they had made taking down gangs."

"Right, I get that," Robert said.

"But the FBI isn't really concerned with Heartbreaker. Think of the scale they work on. The problem with drugs and weapons..."

Jack sighed. Robert thought he knew what Jack meant, but it was hard to articulate.

"It's like..." Robert started. He trailed off.

"Erosion."

"Yeah. It's like fighting a force of nature."

"Yeah. Heartbreaker, he's an isolated case, right? Drugs are much more likely to affect you, the average person."

Outside the window, the wind picked up, blowing leaves across the parking lot.

 _The sound of dry leaves brushing across asphalt as they blow..._ Jack mused. He sat up straight, smelling the scent of rain.

"Is it gonna rain? Could screw with the footage we're trying to get."

Robert repeated the question on comms, addressing it to Jon Davis.

"Didn't say so on the news this morning. I think it's just the smell of the creosote bushes in the mountains," Robert said.

"Negative," Davis replied a minute later. "NWS has nothing even remotely close for the next week."

 _A benefit of being a high-ranking military officer,_ Jack mused. "Davis probably just called NOAA or some shit."

"Yeah," Robert half-spoke half-laughed, exhaling forcefully on the first half of the word.

"It's like airplane accidents," Robert said. "You're much more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash, but people get way more nervous about flying. It's because if you're driving part of it is in your control. You have the wheel between your hands. Lack of control - sitting still in an airplane seat - is scary. Same thing with Heartbreaker. He walks up to you, decides he wants you, that's it. But drugs?" Robert's voice changed, adopting the tone of a hypothetical person. It was not an uninsulting vocal imitation. " _I_ won't do drugs. They're not dangerous because _I_ don't do them."

Lewis thought about it for a minute.

"I don't think it's just the statistical thing. Or the control thing too, I mean. Sure, Heartbreaker is way less likely to get you. But he's..." He thought about it for a beat, watching the leaves circle on the blacktop. "He's an isolated incident. There aren't that many Heartbreakers. Sure, there are a bunch of Parahumans in total. But not many that feel threatening in the way he does. But drugs...they don't feel threatening, sure. But they pose a real risk to society. I mean, unchecked, it's kind of a one-way street, right? Not that many people _stop_ doing coke or heroin once they start. Without laws, without rehab..."

"What - you think that more and more people would just keep doing drugs until eventually most people were?"

"I honestly have no idea." Jack shook his head. "But I think drugs and weapons pose a systemic threat to America in a unique way. Look at the real way gangs exert force in Central and South America. The rule of law is _losing_ there. The government is pouring significant resources into stopping cartels. They're getting family members and friends kidnapped. People disappear. That shit just hasn't happened in America since Prohibition. Or I guess a little more recently, Cosa Nostra-type shit in New York. That's what they're fighting. The part where people disappear. Where nobody thinks it's particularly weird."

He paused for a second, amending his previous statement. "Not them. _Us._ That's what _we're_ fighting, now."

Robert nodded, agreeing.

"Do you think the same thing is going to happen with Parahumans?"

"Parahuman gangs? What, they start disappearing people who disagree?"

"Yeah, that's kinda what I'm wondering," Robert said.

Jack sighed. "I mean, I feel like most criminals are stupid. Not unintelligent. But that something has to be fundamentally wrong with your thinking to choose a life of crime."

Robert shrugged. "I don't know that I agree in every case."

Jack continued. "I mean...well, okay. It'd be an interesting topic to get into. But it's not my point. Like I Said - not necessarily unintelligent. So let's assume most villains that last even a little bit do so because they're not dumb. Deciding to become a villain aside, they stay out of jail for a bit at least because they're not dumb."

Robert nodded. "Right, okay. Not dumb. So what's their thought process? 'Let me disappear this person.'"

"Right, and I think the logical next step is: 'Oh man, if people start disappearing, the police, the government, whatever - is going to crack down.'"

Robert sounded doubtful. "I mean, how do you know?"

"You know, most bank tellers are told that if they're robbed, the robber isn't drawing attention, they pass over a note or whatever saying 'give me all the money in the drawer' - they're just supposed to hand it over. Not press the panic button. Keep their hands visible. It's all about avoiding the robber shooting."

"Wait, really? Isn't the panic button discreet? Isn't that the point of it?"

"Sure, if the robber runs in the front door with a gun waving around and shouts 'Get down!', they might push the button as he looks away. But that's not most bank robberies. Most bank robberies are the robber standing quietly in line, walking up to the counter, slipping a note to the teller that says 'I am armed, give me the money.' They keep the robber happy. The money's insured. They don't care about the money, they care about living. The bank doesn't care about the insurance premium. They care about not having someone get shot in the lobby. An employee or customer whose family are gonna sue."

He paused for breath.

"Most _successful_ robberies are literally walk in, slip the note, take some bills in an envelope, walk out before the guards notice something is up. Maybe the customer is armed, maybe they're not. We don't find out because they never have reason to draw. They get exactly what they want?"

"If it's that easy, why isn't everyone doing it?"

"Now hold up, there," Jack interjected with a smile. "I didn't say it's that easy. Just that _that is how most successful robberies go down._ There are a few problems. Security cameras catching the plates of the car they came in. Not that common. Here's the real one - each teller has a stack of large denomination bills in their drawer that have a dye pack. The dye pack explodes if it leaves the bank location, and it has a tracker in it."

Robert Francis nodded. "So that's how they eventually catch em. The tracker."

Jack's grin widened. "Nope. If the criminal knows and explicitly mentions it, the tellers are instructed to not insert it."

Robert's brows drew together. "But-"

Jack laughed. "That's my point, dude. It's all about keeping the criminal happy. They only try to catch the criminal - the silent alarm, the dye pack, the guards, whatever - if they're confident the criminal isn't aware of what they're doing. _They care about the danger he poses, not the money he's taking._ "

Robert breathed out. "Wow, never knew robbing a bank would be so easy."

"Yeah," Jack agreed. "These are shit wages. Get your sunglasses out, man. Let's go take a break from the stakeout."

"Fuck it," Robert said. " _I'm_ not coming back to this sit-on-my-ass job. Break for you, retirement for me."

They both laughed.

"Anyway," Jack said once their mirth had died down a bit. "It's not...if you start disappearing people, people are gonna be pissed. Nobody really cares if you rob a bank - there's insurance - or if you burn down a building and nobody dies - insurance - or if you steal something - "

"Lemme guess," Robert interrupted. "Insurance?"

Jack laughed again. "Yeah, but it's not about the insurance. My point is that going around killing people - that's a great way to get a kill order on your head, fast."

Robert nodded.

Kill orders were a relatively recent development, instituted for the Slaughterhouse Nine. People had been afraid of the group since its formation, sure. But it wasn't really until Jack Slash took over the Nine in 1987, killing its former leader King, that people really started to get scared. Certainly they had been terrifying under King. But they felt like they had cohesion, a power structure. Under Jack, they just felt like a bunch of murderous psychopaths. Everyone knew Jack was the nominal leader, but he always seemed awfully...casual. His casual attitude was terrifying - he wouldn't think a second about slicing you from head to toe - and Robert knew that was definitely a part of his image he cultivated on purpose. But on the other hand...it kind of made it seem like he directed the energies of the psychopathic group members, rather than necessarily commanding them, _per se_.

 _At least, that's my take on it,_ Jack thought.

Jack noticed that Robert was thinking about it, too. Robert spoke up, summarizing his train of thought; reviewing the conversation thus far. "So what? So you're a villain. You do some small time stuff, maybe get token hero resistance, maybe not. But if you're thinking about taking a step across the murder boundary...well, I guess you think about it and realize if you murder enough..."

"It's a kill order," Jack confirmed, nodding his head.

"At least if the murder victims are innocents," Robert clarified.

Jack scrunched up his nose, thinking about it. "Right, I guess if you're in a gang, they're a rival gang member..."

"That's warfare," Robert said. "The cost of doing business. Self-defense, even, maybe?"

Jack shook his head. "I'm not satisfied with that, I guess." He looked out the window at the leaves playing in the wind. "But it's okay for now. Say you're innocent. You get murdered, the good guys try to apprehend you. If they succeed, you're in jail. Your buddies break you out in transit or the heroes never apprehend you in the first place, so you keep murdering people. Then you get a kill order."

"Has that happened yet?" Robert asked. "I didn't think there had been that many kill orders."

"There haven't," Jack said. "I guess most villains have done the calculus and are avoiding disappearing and murderizing random innocents."

"Guess they're not as stupid as you think," Robert said. "I guess my question is: are we disrupting that?"

It bore thinking about.

After a pause, Jack shook his head. "I don't think so. Remember, the existing model is that the heroes will try to stop a villain committing a crime. They just might not try that hard if it's not gonna cause harm to civilians."

"Right, so how do we fit in?"

"We're like the heros. For a few reasons."

Robert nodded as Jack ticked them off on his fingers.

"One. We don't go after small fish. You rob a bank? Whatever. You demand protection money, or skim a little off the top of illegal shit happening in your neighborhood? We don't care." He sighed, looking out the windows. Robert could hear the stress in his colleague's - _No,_ he corrected himself. _We're friends by now._ \- voice. "Maybe one day we will," Jack said. "Maybe one day we'll have dealt with the big fish enough to concentrate on other Parahuman villains. But right now, we don't. It's not right, I don't like it. But we're - _right now_ at least - we're only going after the Parahumans who are part of the cartels' distribution networks in a big way. The guys who bring it over the border, who manage distribution stateside."

Robert nodded. "Okay, but what about those criminals? Sear, Ironclad, Slipstream, whoever's next after him. They should care about us."

Jack shrugged. "Well, I guess we do have the advantage that we're relatively new. They don't know much about us yet. The PRT and Protectorate are putting out press releases every time they take down a villain."

"It builds confidence in the hero," Robert said.

"Sure. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But you know that's not how the FBI works. They only hold press conferences when they've finished the job. And when they do, it's a big deal. They depend on regular police work, civilian investigation, whatever, to get the job done. And constantly updating the criminals on their progress wouldn't really help get the job done. It's not a coincidence we're here in LA, doing this. You know tons of stuff comes over the border here, gets distributed elsewhere," - gesturing at the mechanic's shop - "by guys like this."

"Okay, sure," Robert said. "But what about once we're known? I suspect that we can only rely on anonymity for so long..."

"Oh, I agree," Jack said while nodding. "Maybe they retaliate. Maybe it's small, a token 'Fuck off' thing. Maybe it's big, they hit the OPCU HQ, whatever. But I don't think so -" He tapped another finger. "- for reason two. We don't kill villains. _We don't kill villains._ The heroes catch the villain doing something, they _do_ try to take them in. We're the same. I think it's honestly part of the reason we do nonlethal - because if we did lethal takedowns, we'd have to worry more about retaliation. I mean, sure, we're authorized to use legal force if our lives are in danger, but we're always nonlethal first. It's why we're here," he said while gesturing at the car the men both sat in.

Robert thought about it for a second before shaking his head. "Honestly, I'm not sure that logic applies..."

Jack furrowed his brow. "How so?"

Robert sighed. "Well, they never retaliate, unmasking the heroes, right?"

Jack agreed. "Sure, because they'd be unmasked themselves. Hit at home, whatever. Lots of villains have families."

Robert shook his head again. "I'm just not sure it's that simple for us. There's the Mutually-Assured Destruction there of unmasking for heroes and villains. But we're not heroes. We have no secret identity. If you hit our office building, or kill us on a raid, that's the same as hitting a hero in the mask. It's the same thing. Unmasking would be the equivalent of...what, coming to our homes and murdering us? No reason to do that; it's inconvenient."

Jack spoke slowly, feeling for the right words as he went. "So...you're saying that villains are going to hit the OPCU office? Or Chaparral?"

"No, no." Robert looked out the side window. "I'm not saying anything specific. I mean, maybe they will. But what I'm saying is that I'm not sure we'll get the same kind of grace the heroes do. The same...courtesy."

"I have to disagree," Jack said with conviction. "The heroes catch villains doing something bad, they chuck them in a PRT cell. We catch them doing something bad, we chuck then in an OPCU cell. There's no difference there."

"We as an organization exist because we as individuals are not heroes," Robert said. "The OPCU - the OSF - was founded because the normal humans who are employed by it are expendable. We are expendable. I guess I just have a feeling that the villains will see us the same way."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I wasn't able to determine when Niko Vasil started to be known, so this detail is potentially temporally impossible. Do not use it to date the story.


	15. Overwhelming 2.6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've trimmed the previous chapter and added its end as the beginning of this chapter. If you've been following the work as it posts, then it's possible you've read the first segment of this chapter. If so, just skip to the first break.

_When seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise: ...With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?_ \- Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

After they had gotten visual confirmation of Slipstream headed away from the mechanic's shop, Jack had climbed up onto the roof with his gear and setup the sniper blind. He had lain in wait on the roof since, the same uncomfortable belly-down position. Slipstream arranging for someone to dead drop him supplies while he was away from the mechanic's shop would not be entirely unreasonable, so they had decided the best way to avoid detection - by any potential allies of Slipstream - was to get on the roof as soon as possible after Slipstream took off for the stash house to the south.

Jack shifted around. To be honest, he had enjoyed leaving behind certain parts of the Marine Corps when agreeing to join up with the OPCU and OSF. Like laying on a thin pad on a concrete roof for hours. The roof was coated - as most were in the American Southwest - with a reflective insulation.

 _It's basically an emergency space blanket,_ Jack thought. Which would have been great, except he was on top of it. And the sun was beating down from above. Temperatures weren't as hot as they would get by the end of summer, but it certainly didn't feel that way if you were trapped between the sun and a layer of very reflective foil. Luckily OSF tactical gear mandated long sleeves and pants, and most of Jack's face was covered by his spotting gear. The blind provided shade, and the thin pad he was laying upon provided some insulation between him and the hot reflective layer on the roof. _Though the blind is also trapping heat under it. It's like a fucking convection oven._

Nope, Jack had not missed this part of his time in the USMC. The thought brought him back to how he had ended up with the OPCU. He had been summoned by his CO, who had encouraged him to listen to some strange charismatic man's recruitment pitch. The man turned out to be Jon Davis, and Jack Lewis was very glad that he had listened and taken Davis up on his offer. Granted, that had been a total nightmare, working that shit out with the Office of Personnel Management. In order to authorize the kinds of actions the OSF was attempting to enact, the Secretary of Defense would have had to authorize an emergency action. The Act that authorized the formation of the OPCU had included changes to the structure of USC section 6323, the US Code on military leave. As any experienced legislator could tell you, a significant part of the time a bill spent being debated was because of its riders - pieces of other legislation, addendums, clarifications, and other errata that were attached as addendums or appendices to a bill. The addendum in question had allowed for another type of military leave, allowing for the transfer of chain of command to the civilian OPCU during the period of leave. This essentially recognized the OSF as a unit under the complete control of the OPCU. Jon Davis ran the OSF in a manner familiar to all of its members, but the importance of the addendum was that the OSF was ultimately responsible for taking the orders of the civilian OPCU director.

As a negative result, all of the men had given up their chance of early and fast promotion to join the OSF. The USMC was not in the habit of promoting men for things they did outside of duty while on what was effectively extended leave.

 _It takes a special kind of optimism to throw away great career prospects for a total unknown,_ Jack thought. Every single one of the OSF men had great career prospects in the USMC; it's why Jon Davis had handpicked them for this elite team, after all.

Jack shifted around again and grunted. Even though it was quiet, it was apparently loud enough to be picked up on comms.

A voice laughed at him. "How are you doing, One?" Now that the operation had commenced, they were codename-only. _It wouldn't do to have some villain going and discovering our identity,_ Jack thought.

"A little stiff," Jack said.

"We're getting close to Burbank now," Finley - _No,_ Three _,_ Jack corrected himself mentally - said over comms.

"How far out of LA are you, Two?" Jack asked.

"Not really," Russo replied.

"Well, once he's here we expect he'll still take a while to stash the car, change, pack his drugs, whatever."

"Roger that," Russo said.

"Hey, Faceplant - drive careful." Jack figured it was worth ribbing Russo to not use his code name. _Besides, we just made up the name for him. It's not like it's recorded anywhere._

Jack suspected that Russo wouldn't drive careful: he was an expert driver - they all were, to be on OSF Delta - but he'd be going fast.

"Alright, Four," Jack said to Robert. "Let's check the video cameras one last time."

They had set up the video cameras before Slipstream arrived, but they were most interested in the video of him taking off, so it was worth a re-check. Robert reached behind him, grabbing a laptop from the back seat of the car. He opened it and tapped a few keys.

"Feed looks good, One."

Right as a sedan began to pull into the parking lot.

Jack spied Patrick Finley's bike a ways back. Honestly, if he didn't know the man and the bike, he would not have suspected a tail. Finley was good.

"You're clear, Three."

"Roger that," Finley said before accelerating down the street.

The car pulled to a stop in front of the door. Slipstream got out, taking the keys out of the ignition, before casting a furtive glance around. Apparently seeing nothing, he disappeared inside for a moment before Lewis heard the sound of him pulling the chain that rolled up the garage door. Slipstream stepped back outside and hopped in the car, starting it and driving inside. The engine cut a second later, and the chain rattled again as the door lowered.

Jack was getting uncomfortable again by the time Slipstream stepped out. He had changed out of his civilian clothing into his costume. It was a skintight onesie with long sleeves and pants. Jack could see the bulges where he had packed drugs against his skin, but they weren't super obvious in the textured cloth of the onesie. Furthermore, Jack noted that he had spread the drugs all around his body.

 _Is that to disguise the amount he's carrying, or is it something to do with his power?_ Jack wondered.

The man's volume - his occupied space - was not that much bigger than it had been in his slightly baggy civilian clothing.

_All up and down his legs, his back...even the backs of his arms. He must have spent his whole time inside...what, maybe an hour? Taping drugs to himself. There's no way that's just to hide how much he has. Anyone seeing him would notice the lumps all over his body if he was standing still; at flight he's going to be moving too fast to see anything at all. It must be something to do with the power._

Slipstream glanced around one more time before accelerating upwards smoothly and quickly. There was a loud boom as he lifted off. The leaves on the asphalt were left swirling around again.

_Well, I sure hope the cameras are fast enough. Because I sure as fuck saw nothing._

* * *

Wednesday morning. The men of the OPCU Strike Force were sitting in the briefing room, watching highlights of the various videos of Slipstream lifting off.

"Alright guys," Davis said at the front. "Our Parahuman theorists have culled a lot of the footage and started going over some of the best stuff. Here it is. You all have experience fighting Parahumans, now, so we're going to spend some time working over the footage and other data we collected from Delta's reconnaissance."

 _How does one become a 'Parahuman theorist',_ Guzman wondered. He had no idea how the OPCU had found or vetted these guys. Whoever had found and picked Davis to lead the OSF had done a marvelous job, though, so he should probably extend the benefit of the doubt to their selection of 'theorists' or whatever. _Picking capable military officers and capable civilians isn't necessarily the same skillset, though,_ he thought.

Hu turned his attention to the video on the screen, which was showing Slipstream's takeoff in excruciatingly slow detail. Guzman watched as Slipstream accelerated off the top of the frame.

"Well, that's one thing," Guzman said, clearing his throat.

James rolled his eyes a few feet behind Guzman. Another cryptic statement.

Guzman gestured at the top of the frame. "Slipstream accelerates out of the frame. Watch again. He's faster as he gets higher."

The men watched the video again twice; the short clip was currently set to loop. A timestamp on the bottom-right showed that the whole video took barely two seconds of real time. It was slowed down to approximately one thirtieth speed, so the two-second clip played back over the course of a minute.

"His power gets stronger the further away he is from the ground," the deep voice of Dorian Thomas rumbled.

"Okay, so what are the implications?" Davis addressed the room with the question.

"Well, we should try to fight him closer to the ground," Jack Lewis said.

"Right - if we're trying to hit him way up in the sky, he'll be moving much faster and able to ascend much more quickly," Alan West contributed. "That's kinda freaky backwards honestly - it gets easier to fly as he ascends."

"Not necessarily." The voice was that of Patrick Finley. "I have a VFR pilot's license. Hobby, whatever. A plane has to have higher ground speed as they climb because...well airplane wings work by air flowing across them, right?"

James Wilson nodded. "Right, lower pressure on the bottom of the wings because the air is moving slower -"

Finley shook his head. Guzman suspected he was annoyed: his Boston accent was a little more prominent. "No. For some reason that's an explanation we keep teaching, but it's...anyway, it doesn't matter. The point is that, regardless of the fine details, a plane needs air moving over and under the wings. The air is less dense at altitude, so airplanes have to have a higher ground speed to accommodate for the lack of, you know, air."

Alan spoke again. "Okay, so I guess his body works like a plane wing? That's why he can fly faster at higher altitude?"

Finley shook his head, slowly. "I think we might be barking up the wrong tree, here. Do we have footage we can compare of him flying?"

Davis nodded. There was some footage from a camera they had set up at the air reserve base out towards Palm Springs, as well as some footage taken in Arizona.

They watched both.

Mario Russo let out a grunt.

"What's up, Faceplant?" Jack asked.

Russo rolled his eyes, but spoke up. "Looks like he's moving much faster in this than when I saw him, not quite as far East as the ARB."

"How fast was he going, Russo?" Finley asked. He had a look of intense thought occupying his face; Jack suspected this was the only reason he had neglected the important duty of making fun of Mario.

Mario's eyes got wide and he shook his head as he held his hands out and up. It was a classic 'What the fuck?' gesture.

Finley waved his right hand at Mario. "No, I just mean in relation to the other videos. Give us a sense. Order of magnitude, whatever."

"Well," Mario said while thinking about it for a second. "Noticeably slower than in the clip from the ARB, there. I mean, definitely faster than half that speed. And definitely much, much faster than at takeoff - say, maybe twice or triple the speed."

Finley nodded. "I'd have no way to guess those numbers, but that's consistent with what I'm thinking."

He stood up and walked over to a whiteboard, drawing two axes and labeling them: altitude on the x-axis, velocity on the y-axis.

"Let's put down the few points we have an idea of. First, the origin." He drew a dot where the two axes met. "When he's standing on the ground and not using his power." He then drew a steep upward line - quickly increasing velocity while altitude remained very similar. "When he's first lifting off. We all saw this - he accelerates pretty quickly. But remember that he stays low to the rooftops and treetops as he loops north around the San Gabriel Mountains. He's effectively flying really low through there to avoid airport radars and other detection, like being seen. Much harder to be seen near the treetops."

"Everyone agree? He flys pretty low. We know this because. One. We don't see him on radar."

Davis nodded. "We were collecting radar data from all available nearby sources. He was flying below it, or he had some kind of radar masking technology."

"Jack, you didn't see any sort of advanced tech or anything, right?"

Jack shrugged. "I guess he could have hidden it in his suit. Seems unlikely, though - pretty much every square inch of his suit was packed with what looked like drugs."

Finley nodded. "I think the radar masking is unlikely, especially when we consider the other evidence. Two. We saw him fly behind the mountains and then come out from behind them. He didn't look like he had climbed much, right, Russo?"

Mario agreed. "I'd say not at all, but that's just eyeball estimate."

Patrick resumed speaking. "Okay, so the radar-masking tech is looking increasingly unlikely, right?"

"Occam's Razor," Guzman said. "I'm not sure if I can phrase it mathematically, but lemme see how I can do. Basically, say you have two theories. In this case, he maintained a low altitude over the mountains, or he didn't. If he didn't, then he needed radar-masking tech, and he came back down to the same altitude before passing east out of the mountain range. Basically, Occam's says that if you have to keep inventing explanations for another theory - if you need to keep adding stipulations and addendums for it to possibly be true - then it's, uh, likelihood is affected by the likelihood of those stipulations. So if we want to assess the likelihood of whether he changed altitude, it gets dinged or penalized because it's unlikely that he has radar masking technology. It gets dinged again because it's unlikely he just randomly changed altitude again - there's population that could see him to the north of his flight path even while he's flying through the mountains. He's experienced, he's been flying this route weekly for a while now. So we say it's unlikely he acted dumb here when, as far as we know, he does the same thing every week, and he's acted pretty smart otherwise. Stashing his car, avoiding prying eyes, keeping his destination pretty hard to determine, et cetera."

Jon Davis nodded. "Makes sense. If we want to assume that he didn't maintain a low altitude, we have to justify the explanations for how and why he didn't."

Guzman interjected. "You have to justify the explanations in either case. It's just that they're harder to justify and less probable the other way."

Patrick nodded. "So let's close the book on that part and assume he flew at low altitude. Thanks, Guzman."

He drew another dot on the graph. This one almost above the previous, to indicate the fact that altitude had barely changed, if at all. The dot was also much higher. "When we saw him exit to the east of the mountains, Russo estimated he had maybe tripled his speed. And that it was maybe...let's say, three-quarters...of his speed noted from the ARB video."

Mario nodded as Patrick drew the final point on the graph - a little higher up to represent the increase in speed. "Even though he was still flying low by aviation standards in the ARB video, it's the most altitude he picks up the entire time we're watching," Patrick said. "For that reason, it's way further out to the right here."

"Now," Patrick continued while stepping back from the board to look at it. "We don't know what happened in between these points. His velocity and altitude could have been all over the place. But let's connect them with lines. We'll assume it's a relatively constant thing so we can see what shape the graph is - just remember that it could be doing anything in between the points we've drawn."

Everyone nodded or voiced their agreement.

When he was done, the graph looked like this.

Guzman spoke first. "Yeah, Finley, that doesn't really make it look like altitude is affecting his velocity. I guess they both generally increase together - none of them ever gets any smaller," he clarified. "But that middle segment, when he's flying north of the San Gabriels - if altitude were fueling his speed, then there's no way he'd see that increase in speed while his altitude pretty much stays the same."

"That was my suspicion," Patrick said. "When I said we're barking up the wrong tree, I think we're wrong about how his power works."

Dorian nodded. "I said his power gets stronger the further he gets away from the ground. Guzman said he accelerates and I just tried to think of what would cause it. I guess if it's not height, I'm not sure what it is."

Patrick Finley grinned. He was pretty sure he had figured it out.

Guzman didn't notice Patrick's grin; he was lost in thought. "Right, I did say that..." He let out a strangled noise.

Patrick's smile widened as he sauntered over to the video screen. All of the men were watching it, trying to get an intuition for Slipstream's power.

Guzman kicked his foot against the table in front of him, hard. "What else is changing?!?"

Patrick tapped the timestamp on the lower right-hand corner of the video with his capped whiteboard marker.

"Oh _fuck me_ ," Mario Russo said. "He gets faster as he flies longer?"


End file.
